


Disco 2000

by georgiamead97



Category: Frank Iero and the FV, Gerard Way and the Hormones, Hesitant Alien - Gerard Way (Album), My Chemical Romance
Genre: Alcohol, Alternate Universe - High School, Angst, Anxiety, Asshole Gerard Way, Best Friends, British, Drug Use, Eventual Romance, Eventual Smut, Fluff, Frerard, Friends to Lovers, Gay, Heartbreak, High School, High School AU, M/M, My Chemical Romance References, References to Depression, Sad, Smut, United Kingdom, Virgin Frank Iero, alternative universe, frank iero - Freeform, gerard way - Freeform
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-05-21
Updated: 2019-11-23
Packaged: 2020-03-09 02:28:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 57
Words: 255,503
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18907666
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/georgiamead97/pseuds/georgiamead97
Summary: Being in love with your best friend isn't exactly an easy thing to do, especially when he's turning into everything you hate.Gerard had been my best friend ever since I could remember but things were becoming more strained between the two of us by the day. I think if it was not for me being so helpless infatuated with him, my devotion to him would have been buried a long time ago. His new friends had snatched the boy I was in love with from me long ago, and buried him deep under this arrogant stranger.BRITISH AU WHERE GERARD IS AN ACTUAL CHAV





	1. 1) The boys all loved you but I was a mess.

**Author's Note:**

> THIS WAS INSPIRED BY THE PULP SONG AND IS MORE OF A BRITISH AU. ALSO NOTHINGS REALLY FACTUAL E.G. BIRTHDAYS AND FAMILY NAMES JUST BCOS IT'S LIKE A COMPLETELY NEW AU. SORRY FOR ANY MISTAKES :)

**F POV-**

We weren't born within an hour of each other and his name definitely wasn't Deborah. It was Gerard. It was true, however, that his name did not suit him. There was no way that I deemed worthy to describe Gerard.

" _Oh, it meant nothing to ya because you were so popular_ " the song blared from his over eccentric speaker at a volume that was just a little too loud.

"Please, Frank! Can we just play his new song once instead of this emo shit?" He whined once more resting his cheek on my shoulder, attempting to give me his best impression of a helpless deer caught in the headlights of a car.

"Stormzy just isn't my thing, Gerard" I sighed for perhaps the twelfth time in the past hour. I didn't think that Stormzy would have particularly been Gerard's thing either, well at least not the old version of him. Me and Gerard had been friends since the day that I was born, precisely 4 days after him. Our mothers were school friends themselves and had ended up getting back into contact at the law firm years ago. He had been my best friend ever since, even despite the ever-growing distance between us. Up until we'd reached high school, we had been practically inseparable. Where I went, he went and what he did I followed. That's just the way it was. Despite the best intentions, however, not even a childhood admiration can stop the cruel force of teenage pressures from ripping friendships apart. It had started when we were thirteen, I'd gradually invested myself more in the football team that meant my time with just Gerard had just started slipping away gradually. I felt as if our friendship was like an hourglass and grain by grain, we were just running out of time. Gerard had not shared my love for the game nor the social aspect of it which had resulted in him locking himself away in the art rooms. Despite my best efforts at getting him to join me and my new found friends, he'd spend his breaks locked away, obsessively painting his fantasy worlds choosing to not have any real friends at all. That was until one day it all changed and for some God unknown reason, he'd joined Joe and his friends.

Joe and the rest of his what he would refer to as the 'squad' were the best and worst thing to ever happen to Gerard. On one hand, I was beyond happy that my best friend had finally stopped building walls around himself and actually had a social life nowadays. As selfish as it was though, there was a part of me that longed for my old best friend back every day. Of course, I was not resentful of his new found confidence or more should I say I wouldn't be if it was genuine. Instead of walls, Gerard now wore a mask to protect himself. By this, he had created this cocky persona which was a carbon copy of Joe himself. There were times like when I looked at old photographs or read through old messages between the two of us that I physically ached for the chubby dork I once knew to come back to me. Things changed though, life moved on and the sooner I learnt that the sooner I could move on with my own agendas. Gerard had long ago killed the boy he used to be and buried him so deeply in his unconscious mind that he was never going to come back.

"Frank, hello?" He waved a hand in front of my face, staring at me with inquisitive eyes. Despite my best efforts, I couldn't help myself from losing myself in his eyes. His stupid fucking green eyes. I'd long forgotten the day that I realised that I was in love with him, it was almost as if I'd always felt this way. Before I understood myself, I'd always assumed that I simply admired him but I'd soon learned to accept that was not the full story after all. For a while I was angry, I was confused and most of all I was hurt that he didn't appear to be going through the same thing. In fact, nobody seemed to be going through the same thing as me so I'd locked my feelings away ever since. Nobody in the whole entire world knew that I was totally infatuated with my best friend and it would always stay that way.

"You're not even fucking listening to me man!" He fumed at me. Even when his fiery temper was directed at me, he still found a way to make my knees grow weaker and my heart flutter as if it was trying to break straight through my chest.

"Erm, sorry." I mumbled so quietly, it was probably inaudible "What were you saying?"

"So, you know that girl I'm fucking?" A semi-amused smile spread across his thin lips obviously proud of his ever-growing number of females he was leading on. It appeared that I was not the only one who admired his beauty as ever since he'd made friends with Joe, it felt as if there was a new girl chasing him every single week. It wasn't even like I could blame them because I understood. It was the way that despite his newfound selfish attitude, he could still make you believe that you were the only one who mattered to him. It was his pale skin contrasting against the darkness of his once overgrown hair he used to hide from the world but now was cut short to show he wasn't scared anymore and the deep green of his eyes. It was the way his strong arms that had once been covered in puppy fat but had grown taut with weight lifting could hold you in a way that no one else could. Fuck, I think I made even myself cringe.

"and anyway," he continued, not that I cared "she ended up saying I don't respect girls because I didn't want to be her boyfriend. I never said I wanted to be anything more than friends-"

"But you did, Gerard," I replied in a monotonous voice, trying to show my disinterest in the topic so he would just stop talking. It fucking hurt every time he spoke about girls around us, which was becoming an increasing event. I couldn't quite describe the feeling. It was almost like whenever he mentioned being with anybody else, I could physically feel my heart sink into my stomach. The infiltrating thoughts of him with his strong hands on somebody else's body were worse than any nightmare to date. There was one particular time though that it wasn't just my intrusive thoughts, he'd actually been with a girl in his bed whilst I pretended to be asleep on the deflated air mattress on his bedroom floor. I had clamped the pillow tightly over my head wishing to be anywhere else in the world until it had stopped. I was angry for a while, but all he had to essentially do was call my name in a manner that only he could quite master and it was enough to make me run straight back to him. I knew that he was not particularly a great friend, but I just could not seem to let him go. I sometimes felt if it weren't for the routine we'd had ever since we were just 4 years old of me going to his house every Friday night after school, then our friendship would have died a long time ago right along with the boy who he used to be.

"Yeah, but like you wouldn't get it you're a virgin so how could you ever understand?" He responded to me cruelly. Despite him being extremely overprotective over me, he could also make me feel inferior. I think if it was not for my complete intoxicated with him, I would have despised him. Gerard seemed to be obsessed with the thought of my inexperience for some strange reason. It was if he couldn't quite comprehend that somebody didn't quite see the fascination with having sex with random girls who would inevitably end up not being in your life. I mean as much as that thought did not seem appealing to me, I also did not fully understand what I even wanted out of life. My whole life, there had only really been one person who possessed my thoughts and that was him. I did not know life without him, nor did I have the heart to find out.

"Anyway," he continued taking my lack of response as a cue to carry on his pointless story "so last Saturday, I fucked her best friend because Joe said-"

"I thought that you were at your aunt's last Saturday?" I frowned trying to come across as angry instead of the sadness that was building up inside of me. Anger, I could explain but sadness, not so much.

"No wha- Oh fuck! I'm so sorry!" He slapped his forehead harshly as he remembered the thing I'd begged him not to forget. "it was that game thing wasn't it?"

"It wasn't just a game" my voice came out a little higher than I had intended it to but my point still stood. It wasn't just a game, it was my team's semi-final playoff. My parents couldn't make the game but I had wanted a familiar face there in the crowd. Gerard had insisted that he was going to come and I was only happy to let him until he'd cancelled last minute. He'd told me that he had a family emergency but it appeared he had been lying to me as if I was nothing more to him than those girls who he would play one after another. The worst thing was that even though it wasn't the first time something like this had happened, my heart still couldn't seem to quite get used to the rejection.

"For fuck's sake Frank, is this why you're so spaced out tonight? Is it because you're pissed at me?" He asked but I didn't dare tell him the truth. I couldn't tell him that I forced myself into a daydream so I didn't have to hear about what he was doing last night. Whether it was drugs, sex or any of his newfound anti-social behaviours, I didn't want to hear it.

"No, it's okay Gerard. I guess it wasn't important after all" I sighed resting my head against his bed frame. Even though we'd been sat in the same position every Friday night for the past thirteen years, us both sitting legs outstretched on his king sized bed, it was beginning to feel more and more alien to me every single week.

"Oh, Frankie!" He whined my childhood nickname that I only allowed him and my parents to still use. As much as I hated how juvenile it sounded, it could roll off his tongue with such an expert twist that I suddenly didn't mind it so much. He leant over me and pulled at my ugly green school tie, running it through his fingers and pulling me closer to him. My breathing hitched and my thoughts ran wild but I knew this was just the way he acted, it meant nothing. He looked up from where he was lying with guilty eyes resembling a child who had knocked over an expensive antique. Fuck, he knew what he was doing. "Please don't be mad at me, bug."

Bug. Fuck.

When we were 5 years old, Gerard had developed an obsession with ladybugs. He said as ladybugs were his favourite and at the time, I was also his favourite I would always be his bug. As much as it made me cringe, and his weird love for ladybugs had died, the name had stuck around.

"I'm not mad." I lied. I was actually furious, but it was pointless trying to convince Gerard of anything nowadays, Joe's morals were now too ingrained in his stupid head.

"Don't lie to me, I know you better than anyone ever could so I can tell you're pissed."

"I am not!" I forced a smile, trying to convince him that I didn't care when in actual fact my cheeks were growing hot with jealousy.

"Didn't I just tell you not to lie to me?" He suddenly sat up and pushed my shoulder gently and wouldn't stop until my fake smile slowly turned into a more genuine one.

"Stop it!" I yelled but joined in with pushing him back none of the less. "It's fine I know I don't have big fuck off boobs so I'm never going to be your first choice am I?" I attempted a joke but there was a sense of seriousness to my statement. Since Gerard had discovered females and they had discovered him, I had stopped being his priority even though he would always be mine.

"Don't fucking say that man, you know you'll always be my number one. Now stop being such a fucking victim and tell me about this game!"

"I'm not going to tell you about my game, you hate football" I smirked casting my mind back to those cold Sunday mornings that Gerard had spent shivering in the corner waiting for his parents to pick him up instead of joining in. We'd started soccer together when we were barely starting school but Gerard hadn't lasted long. He didn't share the same thrill of the game that me and my friends did, in fact, I don't think I knew anybody that hated soccer as much as him. "You're just asking because you feel bad."

"Yeah you're right" he smirked, "I do hate soccer but I do care about it when my bestest friend is the fucking captain of the team!" I could almost believe the fake pride that was dripping in his voice.

"Okay, whatever we like won," I replied modestly. I really hated going on about my own accomplishments, I didn't think arrogance particularly suited me but Gerard did. As much of a dick head that he was, he was also my biggest fan. I think that I could have done the bare minimum like make my own breakfast in the morning, and he'd still encourage me to shout to the rooftops about it.

"No way!" He grinned. His stupid grin, which I had fallen in love with long ago that was becoming a less occurrent thing. "I knew you could do it!"

"It wasn't just me though was it?"

"Come on Frank, I hate that stupid game but even I know you carry that whole team." He rolled his eyes as if what he was saying was obvious. He was always going to bias to me though, he hated my friends, especially James. Apart from Gerard, he was my closest companion and had been now for years ever since we'd joined the same football league in high school. James' morals were the complete opposite of Gerard and his friends, he loved sports and hated anything that interfered with that including excessive drinking and drugs. This was always a problem as those were Gerard's two main hobbies, apart from girls of course.

"I do not!" I blushed trying to move the conversation away from myself.

"So, what was the score then?"

"three nill."

"and, how many goals did you score?"

"three but-"

"Exactly!" He replied smugly settling back down amongst his array of pillows.

"But I'm the striker Gerard! That's my job it's not that simple!"

"Yeah right okay I do not understand a fucking thing you just said" he shook his head reaching over for his phone that had buzzed around 15 times in the last minute. "Group chat" he responded not dragging his eyes away from the bright screen. The only thing that stopped him from looking at his phone was his need to satisfy his fairly recent nicotine addiction. He grabbed the yellow pouch of tobacco from his side and began expertly rolling a cigarette between his fingers, poking his tongue out to seal the Rizla. I couldn't help but watch him, as much as I thought smoking was a waste of time, I couldn't help but be completely hypnotised when he carried out the act. The way he just stared ahead with a pained expression on his tormented face, inhaling deeply, appreciating the few seconds his breathing was regulated. He'd never exactly told me the mental torture he went through every day but I wasn't stupid. Just because he got some new friends and act like a complete idiot didn't mean that his anxiety issues were cured, just hidden.

"Why are you staring at me, gay boy?" He smirked at me as we both caught myself just completely lost in him. Of course, he was joking, there was no way he could possibly tell of my real feelings for him but it still made me nervous and the homophobic slur did not help.

"You do realise G that not everybody wants to fuck you, right?" I attempted to joke. Gerard had his defence mechanisms, but I had mine too but not even he could see through mine.

"I'm not offended, I mean you don't seem to want to fuck anybody." He rolled his eyes, inhaling deeply once again. Smoke infiltrated around his basement bedroom which I knew would be fumigated before his mother got home from work. He may have acted like a tough guy, but when it came to his mom, Bethany, he most definitely was not one.

"Life isn't about just fucking people! Why are you so obsessed with it?" I complained finally finding the confidence to challenge his obsession with my virginity. It wasn't as if I hadn't thought about it with an array of different people but every fucking time my mind would find a way to wander back to that pair hazel rimmed green eyes so it was just easier to ignore it. Ignoring the reality of growing up was a lot easier when everybody was just carrying out their first kisses but now things were escalating and it was becoming even more obvious that I was being left behind. It also did not help that my best friend was ahead in this whole race of life thing, it only contrasted with my pathetic love life even more. The day that he had lost his virginity still echoed around in my head. The wound was no longer fresh that somebody else had got to see him in a way I never could but it still ached like ill healed scar tissue. I hated how Gerard treated girls, I really did but in my heart, I could almost find a way to be glad as it meant he never got attached enough to fall in love with somebody.

"You just won't get it man like it just, I don't know, I can't really explain it to you." He smiled to himself thinking back to a memory that I was not invited to share. "Can I ask you something?"

"Shoot" I replied not thinking tonight could get any worse. Maybe next Friday I could find a way to help out with the younger soccer clubs so I didn't have to come here. Apart from, I knew that I would never have the heart to not follow him home like an abandoned puppy every Friday once the clock hit 3 o'clock.

"Well, you're a good looking guy and-"

"Stop it!" I blushed covering my face with my hands.

"No Frank, I'm serious" he dragged my arms away from my face but did not let them go. If I was not so aware of his lack of feelings towards me, I could have believed this was something. Despite knowing he was just trying to be kind, my heart hammered against my chest to the point I was pretty sure he would be able to hear it soon and my cover would be blown. "look at you man, I've always been so jealous."

"Are you crazy?" I asked him with genuine disbelief coating my voice.

"No. I mean your eyes" he gazed into them painfully slow as if he was trying to read me "they're just" he appeared to snap himself out of whatever the fuck he was doing, dropped my hands, and carried on pestering me about my lack of female attention "I don't know, just I don't know why you don't use your face to your advantage."

"Girls don't like soccer players who have a weird obsession with the arctic monkeys, G" I forced a laugh more out of awkwardness than anything.

"Yes, they do!"

"No, they like stupid grime music and fucking ketamine." I crossed my arms which I hoped came across as attitude and definitely not because ever since he'd taken his contact away, I could not stop my hands from shaking.

"That's what the girls I see like" he shook his head as if it was obvious to me "but I know for a fact that Alice asked you out like last week and you told her you were seeing somebody which I know if a God Damn lie, bug."

I mean he wasn't lying. A girl at the back of our science class had for some unknown reason asked if I had wanted to go to a party with her last week but I was pretty sure it was just to get closer to Gerard. Everybody knew he was my best friend, despite our distance. That wasn't the reason I had created an extravagant lie about a girl I had met on a dating app though, it was simply because I had no interest in this girl. The problem with falling in love with somebody like Gerard was the fact that everybody else seemed so futile in comparison. There would be nobody that could quite make me laugh so much that I would have to beg for him to stop otherwise I felt as if I would break a rib, there would be nobody who I would choose to stay awake with and talk to all night about stupid conspiracy theories with despite my admiration for sleep and most of all, there was nobody who was quite as beautiful as he was.

"She's not my type." I simply shrugged trying to come across as uninterested not utterly terrified.

"Why not? She's so-"

"I just don't want to, Gerard!" I snapped taking him back a little. I rarely got truly angry at him and it was even less likely that I would let it show.

"I'm just trying to fucking help man! You're my best friend so why won't you tell me what's wrong with you?"

"What the fuck is that supposed to mean?"

"Because I don't know you just seem" he searched for the right word "distant!"

"I'm not distant just because I don't want to hook up with some girl who blatantly only wants to speak to me to get to you!"

"Is that what you think?" He frowned calming down a little "You really think that girls only talk to you to get to me?"

I mean, he hadn't completely understood what I had meant but fuck it, it was easier than explaining the truth. He took my none response as confirmation and carried on spouting bullshit prophesies and about how great I apparently was.

"You just gotta have confidence! I mean look how much of an absolute dork I used to be!"

"You weren't a dork." I glared wishing he would stop resenting the boy I had fallen in love with.

"You don't have to be nice about it, I was tragic!" He stubbed out the now smoked cigarette on his makeshift ashtray of a science worksheet we'd been given earlier in the day. "So I do get it, Frank. I know how fucking scary it is when you feel like everybody else knows what they're doing and you don't want to make a tit out of yourself if you fuck up."

"You think that's what's wrong with me?" I almost laughed in his patronising face.

"You've not even kissed a girl!" He snapped harshly

"That's a lie!"

"That girl you pecked on the lips when you were like 13 does not count, Frank." He responded bitterly. Gerard always joined my family on our annual trip back to my grandparent's hometown in Amalfi every single year without fail. One year, on the brink of finding ourselves, we had met some girls at the local swimming pool who had insisted on being our friends. This was obviously long before the days of the new Gerard but instead, he sat there with a furious face on covered from the harsh sun rays in a fucking David Bowie t-shirt.

-

_"David Baw-iey" the pretty olive-skinned girl came over and glared at Gerard's brand new t-shirt he had been so proud to wear._

_"It's Bowie." He snapped harshly turning away back into his sketchbook. He was my best friend, I could tell he wanted to be anywhere else but here but I was trying to encourage him to be sociable. He was so special that he couldn't just hide himself away from everybody._

-

I glanced at the slightly off white paint of his bedroom wall where his Ziggy poster had once proudly hung with a certain melancholy sadness. I would never forget the day he had ripped it down with such force it had torn all because Joe had laughed and called him a faggot for having it.

"Why not?" I protested

"Because it wasn't even a proper kiss man! It was just because her family were going home from the resort and she kissed you to say goodbye for like 2 seconds and then you never called her like you said you would!"

All though it was all those years ago, I still remember that girl taking me by surprise by landing her lips briefly on my own as she said goodbye to me and Gerard. He was glad she was going home claiming she was irritating, I just thought she was sweet. Not my type, but sweet none of the less.

"Okay, but what if I just want to actually like a girl before I do anything like that?"

"Oh fuck off, Frank!" He shook his head "Look I know you're obsessed with those weird teenage romance films and that shit but I promise you your first kiss is not going to be the amazing spectacle you're dreaming it's going to be. Kissing doesn't mean jack shit at the end of the day it just feels good and the sooner you learn that the less uptight you're going to be."

"It's not that simple, G" I threw my head back in frustration. My life would have been so much simpler if I could just turn around and yell in his face that I didn't want anybody if they weren't him. My mind was like a fucking prison cell that I had been served a life sentence in with absolutely no chance of bail. With this, I paced back and forth over and over running over my mind about what my deepest fantasies were and the reality of my tragic life.

"I mean I'd fucking show you if I could" he laughed a little as if what he had just said hadn't caused my brain to implode on itself.

"wh-" I couldn't even finish what I was saying because my tongue suddenly felt as if it was swollen and I had lost to the ability to annunciate my words.

"Oh come on don't freak out it was just like a joke I don't know you just always say I make you comfortable." He had begun to roll another cigarette which confused me a little. His routine was always to have one at precisely half five in the evening so the smell of the lingering smoke would be long gone before his mother could beat the rush hour traffic but here he was lighting another past his smoking curfew. The way he was speaking was so cooly calm but the way he was struggling to fold the Rizla over indicated to me that things weren't as okay as they usually were with him.

"but erm we're friends and I don't even know what that's supposed to mean!" I whined begging for him to stop fucking with my head. Some of the things he said to me in the privacy of his room, far away from the judgemental ears of his friends were borderline suggestive. I knew that was probably my own mind going into overdrive with my wishful thinking, except for this time it was worse than before. He wouldn't meet my eyes but instead kept the cigarette pursed between his lips barely taking a breath in-between.

"I just meant that I would like kiss you or whatever because I feel bad for you but like I know it's really fucking weird sorry I sometimes forget what's normal around a weirdo like you." He smirked a little, once again regaining himself. I only wish that I could have done the same. Instead, I was frozen as if he'd just pulled a gun out and placed it to my temple. Apart from, metaphorically that's what he had done. He had me in a headlock and the only way out would be pulling the trigger. I wanted him to pull that stupid trigger, fuck I wanted him to do it so badly. However, everyone knew nothing good could ever come from firing a loaded gun.

"Why would you do that?" I stuttered, my voice weak but clinging on not wanting to let this idea escape us. It may have been my only chance to just know what his lips felt like. Just once.

"You're my best friend durh! I love ya man and I just want you to get some confidence that you deserve so you can finally stop being such a virgin."

"I can't tell if you're joking." I frowned just waiting for him to burst into laughter and mock me for almost believing that this was about to happen.

"M'not joking" he shrugged contradicting the statement he had made only moments earlier "but suit yourself."

"Wait!" I said a little too quickly. I didn't have time to think things through, but I knew that almost everything that I had ever wanted was now suddenly presenting itself to me. It's weird, despite being in love with somebody, you kind of just assume that nothing will ever come of it when almost every day is the same ever since you could remember. Sure, he flirted but he flirted with everyone so I'd learnt a long time ago not to get my hopes up. I was in disbelief, this couldn't possibly be happening, could it? He was Gerard, utterly and hopelessly infatuated with anything female yet here he was offering something I wasn't even sure of. "I don't really get what you're suggesting."

"Fucks sake bug are you going to make me say it out loud?" He threw his hands in the air in frustration. I remained silent, as I felt I was walking on a tightrope and any wrong move could send me plummeting to the ground from this cloud I was on. I felt like I was becoming depersonalised to myself as if I was watching this interaction from the outside and not staring desperately at him willing him to take control. Up until we were about 15, I was always the confident one, a little too loud but I made up for the fact that he was so quiet. Things were different now and he was most definitely in control of us now. "Do you want me to fucking kiss you or not? I mean it doesn't mean anything does it we're like friends-"

"Yes," I replied weakly, my voice barely audible.

"Oh shit erm okay." He nodded "I didn't actually think you'd say yes or ah shit."

"We really don't have to." I stared at the ceiling as if my life had depended on wishing that the ground would open up and swallow me whole. My cheeks blushed furiously with the disbelief that I'd let my feelings for him take over my actions. How could I have been so stupid? Of course, it was a joke.

"Nah I mean it's cool man just like we don't have to tell people, do we?" He seemed to be fascinated with the same spot on the ceiling that I was, both of us choosing to stare at it rather than face each other. For someone who had seen me in my worst states, including the time I'd vomited all down myself in the car on a day which was a little too warm and my mom had forced me to strip down to my underwear, I had never felt more awkward around him. I mean I'd shared a fucking bath with this person, not anytime recently obviously but still it wasn't as if he was a stranger to me. So, why did he suddenly feel like one?

"No." I agreed. He dragged his eyes away from the sky and instead chose to stare at me but I could not bring myself to copy him.

"Hey" he gently touched my hand that I hadn't realised was clutching his boring grey bed sheets. The action was intended to gain my attention but instead, it had shocked me, causing my breathing to hitch alerting him to the fact I did not have the mindset as him. "I mean I'm not going to care if you're shit at it am I? Like isn't that the point for me to teach you stuff so you can get some confidence and yeah?"

"Yeah" I agreed with him. Obviously, I was nervous that I would suck at it but that was definitely not why my heart was palpitating to the point I was one more beat per minute away from a cardiac arrest. "I have no idea what I'm doing," I mumbled. I had dreamt of this moment for so long and my lack of experience was going to ruin everything. I wanted so much to this to play out like one of the fantasies I had imagined in my head over a million times. The ones where I would throw him back on his bed and make his knees go weak like he made mine do when he simply just looked at me. That was not going to happen though, I was just going to embarrass myself to somebody that probably was more experienced in it than speaking English. I knew he said that he wouldn't judge me but that's not what I wanted. I wanted so badly for him to not cringe at me, I didn't want to be patronised. Although I was internally freaking out about the situation, it still wasn't quite enough to drag me away from the idea of getting to kiss him. Even if he thought it was just a favour.

"Well, okay sit up I'm not kissing you lying down that's gay man" he smirked, obviously amused by his own slightly homophobic comment. I didn't quite understand why kissing somebody sitting up would make it any less gay than if we were to be lying down but I still found myself obliging to everything he said. I hauled myself so I was sat completely upright and he did the same, only shuffling closer to me in the process.

"So," he said slowly "you don't want to come across eager or anything because that's just like not cool but you don't want to come across like a dick either." He began as if he was teaching me how to drive or something mundane.

"mmhmm" I nodded taking everything he was saying in. I was grateful that he was talking a lot, and even taking me through every step as it made me less nervous. I also felt as if it was a disguise, he didn't know I longed to kiss him so badly that it was all I thought about. I was a seventeen-year-old, jock type, indie music loving nobody not a thirteen-year-old girl so how the fuck did he have the ability to make me feel like one?

"I dunno you could like look at their lips." To prove his point, he flickered his eyes from my own to my lips making me forget how to breathe for a second. If I was not so aware of my movements, I think I would have let out a strangled noise simply for the fact he was making me feel like I was having an anxiety attack. I had one of those before, they were not pleasant but for some reason now I welcomed the feeling to engulf my body. It was like it didn't matter how scared I was because the feeling of elation was enough to overcome it all. I wasn't exactly a drama expert but I deserved an Oscar for the way I was coming across so nonchalantly, or at least I hoped that I was.

"Then like you just wanna move in you could like do this if you don't want to kiss her on the lips straight away it's safer." He took me by surprise and closed the gap between us placing his warm lips gently on my cheek. He did it so softly and quickly, I couldn't quite believe that he'd done it at all. It wasn't as if he had never done this to me before, he had placed many messy kisses on my cheek when his friends had not been around like when I'd won my football tournaments and every time I'd blush and rub furiously at my cheek pretending I hadn't been wishing for him to just move over a few inches to my lips. This time it felt different though, the action was not an expression of spontaneous elation, it had been strategically planned and had left my skin burning under his touch.

"Dude, you're going red." He laughed at my awkwardness.

"Yeah because it's awkward! Let's just forget it, it was stupid." I mumbled trying to lie back down on the bed, feeling disappointed in myself that I had let this moment escape me.

"For fuck's sake." He fumed leaning over me and kissing my cheek once again apart from this time he lingered there. I felt his warm breath on my cheek as his lips teased my skin underneath them never getting close enough to give me the touch that I wanted.

"It drives them crazy." He whispered in a low, husky voice I had only heard him talk to his numerous dates in when he wanted to get laid. He did not have to tell me that his action was enough to drive one into a state of insanity because it what I was feeling myself right in that very moment. He kissed the same spot again, applying slightly more pressure than he had before causing my next breath to hitch in my throat. He retracted his hand from the bed and instead rested it under my chin forcing me to drag my eyes from the bed stand and instead meet his own. That was my first mistake. It was almost like he was like the reincarnation of Medusa as his gaze caused me to freeze, never mind his gentle hand propping my chin up. The result of his actions had caused us to be nose to nose, a position I'd seen him in with others many times. There was one particular time at a party he had dragged me to where he had a girl I couldn't even remember the name of and, I'm pretty sure he couldn't either, had been nose to nose with him. She had been clinging to every word he was whispering to her as if he was disclosing the secrets of the universe to her whilst I stared on in jealousy. Now it was me though, and I had no idea how weak it could make me feel and I suddenly understood why that girl had looked so utterly captivated by him. He had given up on speaking and instead rubbed his nose against my own. If I wasn't so frozen, I could not have stopped myself from dragging his lips to my own so maybe it was a good thing I physically could not move. I felt as if my heart was in my throat as his hot breath made lip almost quiver with anticipation. My ears had grown so hot that not even my playlist could drag me out of this derealisation state of mind I was in and, the once calming voice of Alex Turner simply bounced off my eardrums and got absorbed into the room. He let out a deep sigh, moving his hand from my chin to splay on my cheek instead.

"Can I kiss you?" He asked softly, his voice shocked me as it seemed to fill the empty space. I couldn't find the words to reply, I simply nodded begging him to just do it. He kissed my cheek one last time before trailing his lips down to meet my own. It was probably only less than a second, but it had felt like a lifetime. I had already waited forever for this moment though, and I would wait even longer for an opportunity like this with him. The only thing to stop my mind from racing was the sudden feeling of his lips on my own. It was only a peck, no more than that girl all those years ago but fuck, even that was enough for me. His lips were soft and lingered a little too long for him to take the action back. He didn't take it back though, he instead repeated the action but this time opened his mouth a little and stayed for a little while longer on my closed lips. He repeated the action over and over until I finally snapped back into the moment and dared to open my mouth a little back, and it appeared to be the best decision I had made. The previously juvenile action had quickly escalated and was becoming more desperate. It wasn't exactly yet a deep kiss but I was all too aware that it was something. I felt as if I was on some sort of free fall rollercoaster, my stomach fluttering so much that if I was not so involved in the moment I think I could have thrown up. I felt as if things could not get any better but that was before I felt his tongue gently roll against my lips which indicated that things were going to progress. I think in the back of my mind, I had always wished that kissing him would be anticlimactic so I could get over this stupid obsession with him but unfortunately, this was not true. To have him kissing me was quite indescribable and nothing to date could beat the feeling. I felt his tongue attempt to open up my mouth and I was only too happy to oblige. It must have felt terrible for him as for a moment I just sat there, him doing all the work not quite sure what to do with myself. He didn't seem to care though, he just repeatedly moved in and out my mouth, moving his lips against my own until finally, I seemed to catch on to the rhythm he had set. It was slow, but I was grateful because I grew more and more confident with every passing second. It sounded like it should have been weird but the feeling of his warm tongue moving rhythmically with my own was causing my insides to feel as if they were on fire. With my new confidence, the speed between us increased to the point I was clutching desperately at his tie begging him to get even closer. He seemed to accept my non-verbal cue as he got on to his knees, never quite breaking the contact between us, and began pushing me backwards. He moved his hands to lazily clutch my waist as I brought up my own and wrapped them tightly around his neck. I was a little taken back by my own confidence but for some unknown reason, I was pulling him closer to the point he was on top of me and were actually fully kissing on his bed. His statement from before about kissing me lying down, he had seemed to have long forgotten about as he was the one deepening the contact between us even further to the point it was becoming desperate. Our actions had once been slow but now they were becoming quicker and messier and his body was edging closer to mine.

But then it ended. The sound of the front door slamming upstairs indicated that Beth had gotten home from work but also told me we had been like this for 15 whole minutes. The noise of his mother's work heels clapping on the wooden floor above us caused him to jump away from me as if I had suddenly given off 2000 volts of electricity.

"Fuck." He dragged his words out before bursting out laughing. I couldn't believe that was it. It didn't feel finished to me, it felt as if things had only just begun but his smirk indicated that nothing else was to happen. He looked so fucking good, my roaming fingers had caused his dark hair to matte and become a mess but it suited him, his cheeks were flushed and his lips were puffy and wet. I did that to them. I ached to do it again. "That was mad!" He collapsed on the bed next to me, still laughing at a joke I had appeared to have missed.

"Huh?" Was all I could bring myself to say. I was beyond confused, one moment ago he had been passionately kissing me like he actually meant it, and in the next, he was acting as if I was a fucking comedian.

"That was kinda hot" he shrugged as if he was merely telling me the weather forecast "I mean like I don't mean it in a weird way but fuck it, man, I thought you said that you haven't kissed anybody before!"

"I haven't," I mumbled not being able to read him and suddenly feeling like all those girls that could not understand him either.

"Then you had no reason to be scared, some girls I've been with could learn something from you, bro." He appeared to add the friendship endearment term at the end to make me come crashing back to reality. The sad reality that this hadn't changed anything and we were still just friends, and sometimes it felt like not even that.

"I really didn't suck?" I said not wanting to admit that I felt a little smug that I hadn't just completely embarrassed myself.

"Nah" he shook his head "which means buggy..." he lingered on the last word as if he was about to say something really exciting. To him, he probably felt it was something to be excited about but then again, he did not know the truth, did he?

"What?" I pressed my lips together. Those lips that he had just kissed only moments earlier.

"You have no reason to not say yes to a double date anymore!"

Oh.

"I don't want a-"

I was cut off by the sound of his phone ringing, causing his attention to snap away from me and to answer the call instead.

"Delo!" He said happily into the receiver. Delo was the nickname carried by Joe that we had once laughed at together when we were younger, but now he used it as if it was his birth name. I took that moment to completely zone out of the situation and instead take the moment to comprehend what had just happened. After years of wanting it to happen, he had finally kissed me and it was crazier than I ever could have imagined it to be. Although it meant nothing to him, I had to fight the smile that was threatening to take over my face. I had never been so grateful for the protective barriers that were my own thoughts. They allowed me to face reality as I usually spent most of my time locked away in my own head stuck between fantasies and a set of maladaptive beliefs. Now I had the pragmatical knowledge of his lips though, I wasn't quite sure if I would be stuck in my imagination forever.

"Frankie doodles," he said snapping me out of my daydream of him "I have some bad news for you."

"What?" I whined

"Joe is coming here we're going to a party tonight. I mean you're welcome to come but I know that you won't."

He was absolutely fucking spot on. As much as I loved being around him, I could not stand the person he was around Joe which made my quiet night in of reading my secret Larry fan fictions much more appealing. Luckily, I was saved from answering him as Bethany called down the stairs.

"Gerard! Get up here now!" She was mad, I could tell and so could he.

"Ah, fuck." He shot to his feet throwing his science paper ashtray under his bed. "Can you come with me? She's never as pissed when you're with me!"

"Fine" I got to my feet ready to face the wrath that was his stone-faced lawyer mother.


	2. 2) She broke my heart, why you taking the piss for?

"Do you want to tell me why my house smells of cigarettes?" She stood at the door to the basement stairs, arms folded and lips pursed.

"I don't know, mom" he shrugged

"I swear to God Gerard, if you have been smoking again I'm going to-"

"I haven't been smoking have I Frank?"

"Frank?" Bethany raised her perfectly waxed eyebrow at me. She trusted me to tell the truth more than her own son as she knew I was not completely for smoking due to my athletic dreams. She definitely should not have trusted me though, because as much as she was like a second mother to me, I couldn't help but do anything her son asked me to do, including lie to her face.

"No he hasn't Beth, do you think I would let him?" I produced the over-rehearsed lie that me and Gerard had gone through a million times before.

"How did you turn out so considerate compared to my pig-headed son?" She asked but her face softened as she reached over and kissed his cheek.

"Mom" he whined but nothing could stop him being the absolute mother's boy that he was falling sucker to her affections.

"So what have you boys been up to tonight?" She asked busying herself, unpacking her work bag and finally relaxed into the beginning of the weekend.

"Video games!" Gerard replied quickly shooting me a deathly look as if I would just announce to his mother, my own moms best friend that I had spent the past hour making out with her son.

"Aww" she responded not really listening anyway "Can I make you boys some dinner?"

"No thanks" He responded "I'm going out"

"Again?" She frowned "you were out last night sweetie and the night before."

"Yeah but it's Jesse's birthday party tonight so it's important."

"Okay, fine" she agreed. I think she felt similarly to me, she was happy that he had new friends but they weren't exactly a mothers dream "but don't you dare thinking about bringing another girl back here I'm warning you, Gerard!"

"Mom!" He whined again trying to fight the blush spreading across his cheeks at the fact his mother knew all about his bedroom activities. I don't know why he had the audacity to get embarrassed though, it was hardly as if he tried to hide the fact that he had girls over.

Before an altercation between the two of them could break out, there was a harsh knock at the door.

"I'll get it! It's probably Joe." Gerard raced to the front door not wanting his mother to answer to the person he was trying his hardest to impress and give this false persona too.

"Delo" he nodded at his shivering friend bumping his fist in their ridiculous ritual they had to do every time they saw each other. Bethany just looked over and shook her head at me before disappearing into the kitchen as she had been the brunt of Gerard's attitude many times before for 'embarrassing him'.

"It's fucking freezing out there man, why the fuck didn't you pick me up?" He fumed pushing past Gerard and seeing me. As much as I was displeased to see him, I couldn't help but feel a little better at the fact he was soaking wet, despite wearing his overpriced North Face coat. I did not understand people's obsessive need to impress Joe. To me, he was average looking with an even shittier personality. There was nothing that particularly stood out about him, he had a mousy brown hair colour, a dress sense that only Skepta could be proud of and a strong desire to wear too much savage aftershave. His dull blue eyes met my own, any life behind them killed off long ago with the excessive cocaine sniffing.

"You didn't pick me up because your little boyfriends here again, G?" He spoke again, glaring at me. As petty as it was, I hated the fact that he felt as if he knew him well enough to use the name I'd coined in childhood. Okay, so it wasn't exactly the most original nickname in the world but it was mine.

"No, I didn't pick you up because you still owe me a ten bag of pot dick head!" Gerard scowled becoming an increasing stranger to me. His whole demeanour had changed ever since Joe had walked through the door. He had become tense as if Joe could read his mind and see what we had been doing not all that long ago.

"Ah, well we're friends aren't we so we share!"

"Yeah, Delo, whatever you say cunt bag."

"Don't get pissed at me bro! I've scored you some bigger shit tonight." He smirked at Gerard who's eyes were wide with something I couldn't quite identify. For someone with such anxiety issues, he could be so fucking stupid sometimes. Anything Joe placed in front of him he would either snort or smoke making him turn even more into that person who the old him would have despised. It was futile telling him though, every time I had in the past it had ended in a fiery argument which resulted in him doing more drugs to spite me so I'd learnt to bite my tongue.

"You ready to go bug- I mean Frank?" Gerard asked me reaching up to the board where he kept his precious car keys. There was only one thing in the world that he was more protective of than me and that was his car. As much as he tried to fit in with his less well of friends, there was no denying that thanks to his lawyer parents, he was a spoilt brat. I mean he had worked to put some money towards his car as well, but he had conveniently forgotten to tell his friends that his parents had given him a sizeable cheque for his 17th birthday. The very next day he had brought the practically brand new all black Audi A3 sitting in his garage, still shiny from the wax he had buffed in the day before. Unlike Gerard, I was not obsessed with cars so I didn't really share his excitement about the fact he had gotten the sportier model or gone out of his way to get the alloys sprayed black but it made it happy so, therefore, it made me happy. Plus, it was a perk to have a friend who took their driving test a week after they were legal as it meant that I had barely had to walk anywhere since. Right now though, walking the few blocks home seemed more appealing than being trapped in a confined space with Joe.

"Yeah, I can walk through. You get off to your party."

"Don't be a doughnut" he shook his head "it's shitting it down with rain outside."

"So you'll drive him and not me?" Joe piped up "He said he'd walk G now come on!"

"Delo, wait" he ignored Joe. It was an event that didn't happen very often seeing as Joe was a puppet master controlling Gerard's strings but it appeared today was one of those few moments that he became his own person again. "I'm taking you home." He said more forceful this time flickering his eyes to meet my own.

Gerard had been driving for nearly a year now so usually, I considered him to be good at it. Not when Joe was in the car though, when he was here I think I would have felt safer in the hands of a drunk toddler at the wheel. He had his chair so far back that he could have been classed as practically lying down, which was only made worse with the fact he had only one hand on the wheel and a cap pulled so far down on his head I doubted he had the use of his full vision.

"Fucking cunt, HURRY UP!" He beeped his horn repeatedly at the poor learner driver in front of him that was preventing us from driving faster than the thirty miles per hour speed limit. "Fuck this" he fumed severing on to the opposite side of the road, kicking back a gear causing the engine to roar and overtake the person in front at such a speed I clutched the seatbelt. Similarly to the topic of drugs, every time I asked him to slow down, he would speed up. The worst part was that it was Joe's encouraging laughter that was making him act like this.

"What a good fucking song!" Joe yelled from the front seat turning the volume up even louder to some God awful rap song.

" _If you ain't gonna love her forever then don't even sweat her trust me the more girls the better, just hit them whenever"_ the speaker blared. I realised why Gerard listened to music like this, it almost excused his awful actions. I could tell he was not completely like his friends though as unlike Joe, every time there was a racial slur in the song he conveniently took a drag of his cigarette so he would not have to verbalise those words. Those were things that not even Joe could pick up on and that he would not even admit to me but I just knew these things about him.

The rain hammered hard on his windshield to the point that his wipers were moving faster than my racing thoughts. I rested my head against the steamed up window, wishing the car journey away. The streets sped past me in a blur but I knew the way back from Gerard's house better than the back of my own hand so did not particularly need to see to know where we were. Just 2 more streets and then I could lock myself away in my room and finally be alone with my uncontrollable thoughts.

"So, I'll see you probably Monday yeah?" He asked as his speeding car screeched to a stop outside of my childhood home. There was a time that our Friday nights would have without fail lead to him sleeping over despite the early start I had on Saturday's. That tradition was long forgotten about though as he'd replaced his soda for liquor and his candy for drugs.

"Yep," I replied shortly, eager to get out of the death trap far away from Joe.

"Wait, I think I forgot my charger in your room, can I come in and get it?" He suddenly said.

"Charger?" I asked in confusion as he had not been to my house in two whole weeks now due to his other social commitments.

"Yeah, it's down the side of your bed. Delo, I'll just be like two minutes bro."

"Well, fucking hurry up" He grumbled, "I'm dying for a drink."

"Yeah yeah me too. I'll be quick!" Gerard replied getting out the car after me and following me up my path. I didn't dare look back at him but I could tell he was coming from the gravel crunching under his overpriced Nike trainers.

My hands trembled as I attempted to unlock my front door, not wanting to know what he was going to say. I knew it was going to hurt me so I wanted to get far away from him so that he couldn't get the chance to ruin what had happened tonight.

"Bug, wait!" He jarred the door open with his foot as I tried to slam it in his face. I was acting so unbelievably suspicious but I couldn't help it, I needed to be alone and to comprehend everything and his sly comments would not help. It was almost as if the person he became when he was around his friends scared me, as from past experience I had learnt he did not care about hurting me. "What's your problem?" He forced his way inside. Although I was more athletic than him, his taller frame meant that he had a natural strength advantage and he could easily push me aside.

"I haven't got a problem" I turned away from him and slammed my rucksack on to the kitchen side "Let's go get your charger."

"Don't be a moron, you know I didn't forget my fucking charger! I just wanted to ask you why you were being weird with me." He yanked my arm with force to turn me to face him. I wasn't quite sure why I was finding it hard to look at him, I guess I just couldn't stand the disappointment that I knew was inevitably going to happen. The fantasy version of him inside my head was enough to plaque and torment my thoughts every second of every day, I did not need anything else to add to that.

"I am not being weird with you! When do I ever talk when Joe's around?" I stared at the wall just behind him so he wouldn't be able to tell I could not bring myself to directly look at him.

"Yeah but I just thought because of what happened you maybe got weirded out by stuff and I just wanted to tell you it was just messing about wasn't it? You don't have to be freaked out man!"

"I promise you I am not freaked out, I just don't want to be around him, Gerard!" I lied. Well, it wasn't a complete lie, I did not want to be around Joe but I also most definitely was freaked out.

"What's your problem with him? I know you're never going to love each other but can you please just stop acting like he's fucking killed someone please!"

Apart from Joe had killed someone. He'd killed that insecure 14-year-old boy who was so impressionable he would have done anything he'd fucking asked him to. Gerard didn't see it like that, he saw Joe as some sort of saviour and himself as a phoenix.

"You don't like James and I don't like Joe that's just life." I sighed rubbing my temple wanting him to just leave. When he was in an argumentative mood like this, it was easier to not be around him, at least then I wasn't at the brunt of his force.

"Whatever. Just promise me you're not freaked out with me, yeah?" He softened his voice and inched closer.

"I promise, G. Now, take this and go have a good time!" I reached over and grabbed a cookie from the side thrusting it in his hands. We didn't have to say anything because we both knew that he wasn't going to actually eat it. Unhealthy foods freaked Gerard out to the point he would rather not eat anything unless it was plain chicken and rice. He spent his early teenage years slightly overweight and was until Joe had drilled it into his vulnerable head that he shouldn't be this way. It had resulted in an obsessive phobia of gaining any form of weight, almost as if every pound that was gained was a step back into his old life.

"Thanks, Frankie doodle" he smiled down at me shoving the cookie into his hoodie pocket probably getting ready to throw it away before anybody asked why he wasn't eating it.

"So, you need to go because I'm getting up at 6 am tomorrow so I'm going to put a film on and go to sleep." I faked a yawn to back up my case even further.

"You're a sad fucker you know that right? It's 7:30 on a Friday night!" He laughed ruffling my hair "but I do fucking love, you bro"

"yeah, yeah course you fucking do" I grinned back up at him trying to comb through my now messy hair.

"Well let's just say, I wouldn't fucking offer to kiss Joe" he smirked, "but that's between me and you."

I sniggered as he began walking towards the door once again. Suddenly, just like that, I didn't want him to leave again.

"G?" I called after him as his hand hovered above the handle, my voice causing him to halt.

"Yeah?"

"Be safe yeah? You know you can call me if you need me to get you or whatever."

"Yeah okay, _mom_ " he rolled his eyes at my concern "but thanks"

"Okay well, bye then" I silently begged him not to leave but to instead turn around and kiss me as he had earlier.

"I'll call you tomorrow bug, I promise!" He called as he walked out the door leaving me staring after him.


	3. 3) Heard from a friend of a friend she's been dancing on the other side of town

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "I walked these streets until I was 17, I didn't care about anything stealing cans rolling cigarettes at 2 AM waiting for that text."

\-------------------

I think I stared at my wall for at least 2 hours but I couldn't be sure, I had lost track of time since I had been dropped back home. I felt that I was in a state of cognitive dissonance as what I had been thinking and remembering couldn't have actually happened, could it? There I lay though, tracing my lips with my own thumb feeling the phantom press of his own. The way I had been studying the plain white wall with the half ripped down poster of Steven Gerrard on, you'd have thought that it held all the answers to my questions, but of course, it didn't. That stupid poster had been on my wall since I was 8 and despite the guy's retirement, I hadn't the heart to take it down because it was the only footballer Gerard had ever cared about, of course. Everything in this God Damn room reminded me of him, it was littered with our memories. His favourite North Face hoodie was thrown across my chair, his old favourite Smiths CD case was left open from him listening to it last time he was here for the first time in a while and worst of all, I could smell the faint smell of his families washing powder on my clothes from where I had been lying on his bed earlier. I rolled over and tried to smother myself in my pillow to stop the infiltrating thoughts of what he possibly could be doing tonight running over in my head. It didn't work though, all I got was the scent of him from where I had been lying, resulting in my stomach feeling like it was folding in on itself.

I was actually thankful when my mother had returned from work. She always stayed late at the office on a Friday and tonight was the night of my fathers weekly poker night which I usually appreciated because it meant I always got to be alone with my thoughts. With how anxious I felt though, I most definitely did not want that right now.

"Hey, sweetie!" My mom said a little surprised that I had come downstairs to her instead of her usual routine of knocking on my door to force me out of my bedroom for dinner. I felt a little guilty, although she had deep, tired eyes from a hellish week at work, her face lit up a little when she saw me standing apprehensively at the kitchen door.

"How was work?" I asked slipping into the chair at the kitchen island. Although I was slightly relieved from my plaguing thoughts of Gerard, I still picked up a forgotten receipt from the counter and started shredding it into tiny pieces to try and stop my hands from shaking. I felt as if my mother would be able to tell of tonight's antics just from the guilty look on my face and it probably wasn't helping that I couldn't bring myself to meet her eyes.

"Are you feeling okay, Frank?" She came over and mockingly felt my forehead "You never usually care!"

"Sorry," I mumbled as she snatched the half-destroyed paper from my hands to stop me making more of a mess. "You just look fed up that's all."

"I'm okay" she forced a smile "It's a tough case" like mine, her eye averted away to avoid eye contact. By 'tough case' my mother was probably hearing about the most grotesque crimes that she had no choice but to defend and pretend she did not have a normal emotional reaction to. I don't know how she did it, being a lawyer seemed like it sucked. It involved long nights at the office, defending evil people and a fuck tonne of abuse from the media. She had Beth though. Whatever my mother went through, nine times out of ten her best friend would be going through almost the exact same thing. That was, of course, everything but the delinquent teenage son who was doing everything in his power to say fuck you to the society that had made his early youth Hell. "Anyway, how was G?" She asked raising an eyebrow obviously trying to squeeze information from me to probably tell Beth of Monday. I had fallen victim to this trick before; after he had pissed me off one time when he had abandoned me at a party to fuck a random girl I had ranted to my mother. She, of course, could not keep that information from her best friend on one of their coffee breaks at work and it had resulted in Gerard being extremely angry at me and being grounded for lying about where he had been that night.

"He's good." I tried to say as calmly as possible. Just speaking about him normally felt strange, but there was no one on this planet that I could be open with, not even my unsuspecting mother. "It's his friends birthday, so he's there."

"Ah, you not going?" She raised an eyebrow. I don't know why, but even after 3 years of this, she struggled to grasp the concept that Gerard's friends were not my kind of people. I mean she'd heard the horror stories from Beth, she should know I was not the kind of person to drive around listening to grime music until the early hours of the morning. I guess Gerard hadn't been that kind of person either though.

"I'd rather kill myself." I rolled my eyes at her as if it were obvious.

"Frank!" She snapped "Don't say things like that!"

"Sorry."

"Well anyway, what do you want for dinner?" She continued normally as if my life could ever be normal again.

That night as I tried to go to sleep, I chose to put my headphones in and play the loudest music that I could think of. As much as I loved Frank Turner, he simply did not possess the power to get Gerard out of my head. I don't think anybody in the world could do that though, he was too deeply ingrained in there. After an hour of tossing and turning to the angsty yells of the Tell Tale Signs album, I had given up and decided to check my social media. That was a mistake though because all I saw was a snapchat story of him dancing a little too closely to a girl in the year below us, swaying just a little too much.

**\- I hope that you're okay.**

I text him as if he was even in a state to reply to me. I lay awake thinking of that stupid 5-second long video until I felt as if I had gone clinically insane. I don't know how long it took until tiredness finally took over, but it was long after my father had come home from his own alcohol fulled evening and retired into his own sleep.

I liked to sleep, it was the only pain relief I could possibly think of for my anxieties but unfortunately, it was only a temporary solution as before it even felt as if I'd had any rest at all, my alarm clock was blaring at 6:30 am on the dot, dragging me kick and screaming from my slumber.


	4. 4) Let me Let you Go

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "Tore my shirt to stop you bleeding but nothing ever stops you leaving."

\--------

I lay in bed on that Saturday morning contemplating if this training session was really fucking worth it. I'd perhaps got about 4 hours of sleep in total, but it felt like even less. My eyes were almost sticking together with the sleep that had crusted in them, and my pounding headache did not help either. That was definitely not the worse of it though, that was sickness in the very pit of my stomach that spiked every time I remembered the way he threw me back on his bed in what had felt like desperation. Still, the counteracting disappointing face of letting James down was enough to haul me to my feet and throw on my kit. Usually, my football kit made me feel like myself as I usually loved the bright blue of my teams colour. Today though, it felt just a little too tight on my skin, and the baby blue only seemed to cause an ugly contrast with the red that ringed my tired eyes. I sighed trying for the tenth time to flatten my uncontrollable hair before giving up and making my way downstairs to face the harsh sunlight of the new day.

"Morning baby" my mother came over, throwing my kit bag on my shoulder and an ice cold bottle of water in my hand "any breakfast?"

"No." I almost groaned at the thought of trying to stomach food right now. If Gerard was anything, he was a fucking good diet method because since his lips had touched my own, I had barely been able to keep anything down other than the few sips of water I had forced myself to drink. Coach Grimshaw was going to be furious at me for not being completely with it this close to the finals but he was going to have to deal with it. I was beyond help right now.

I usually hated the brisk October chill that stung my cheeks on my usual walks to football but today I welcomed it. The air was sodden with the rainstorm we had received the night before and although the sight of the grey city should have been depressing, it wasn't. It was like my own personal pathetic fallacy. The fallen orange leaves did not crunch beneath my worn trainers but instead squelched forming a grotesque looking mass and instead of the usual sound of the morning birds, all that met me was the harsh wind whipping around my face. For the first time though since last night, my cheeks were flushed with something else other than too much adrenaline. Being outside made me feel as if I had been dunked in cold water, and as unpleasant as it initially was, it was at least enough to make me feel more human. Perhaps that's why I had taken a little longer to walk to the park, taking every moment to admire my waking home town.

The park to anybody else was nothing special. The play area had long been overtaken by delinquent teenagers and the field was in serious need of a funding boost as the white lines of the pitch were pretty much indistinguishable with the amount of mud that caked them, but to me, it was home. I was not particularly an unhappy person, I hadn't suffered the same torments that Gerard had when he was younger and for the most part, my life had been uneventful. There were some days, however, that I needed the release of adrenaline like a crack addict needed the next fix, today was one of those days.

"Get the fuck over here!" Coach Grimshaw yelled at me as soon as his milky blue eyes locked eyes on me from where my team were gathered around, shivering with the cool morning wind. To most people, Grimshaw was a terrifying looking man with the cruel wrinkles of life littering his face and his thick rugby frame towering above everybody else. To me though, he was like family. He had been friends with my father in school so had almost demanded me to start playing soccer as soon as I was old enough to kick a ball, and for that, I could never thank him enough. My dad liked soccer but definitely did not share the passion that I and his childhood friend had for the game. To him, football was something to watch on a Saturday afternoon at the bar to unwind from the working week but to me, it was my life. Apart from Gerard, everything in my life revolved around soccer, including all of my friends. Although my whole team were close, I could not deny the unbreakable bond between me and my inner group. It consisted of course of James, my other closest friend and then Kenny, Matt, Harry and Nathan. I saw them almost every day, we spoke on social media all the time and most importantly, we played together every Wednesday night and Saturday morning. Despite my agitated state of mind, seeing the flash of James' green eyes and familiar smirk I couldn't help the smile that spread across my own cheeks. If life was kinder, I would have fallen in love with James. If anything, he shared too many features with Gerard. They both had the same shade of black hair, the same almost transparent pale skin and the same green outlining their eyes. The thing that they did not share though was the anger towards life. James had always been that football obsessed boy next door, he was smart, he was a good person and had always been well liked by most people which I think Gerard had always hated. I think he thought how could someone so similar to himself have such a better start in life? Despite their similarities, Gerard and James were like night and day and unfortunately for me there was just something always more intriguing about the dark that after hours brought.

"You're late." Coach Grimshaw snapped throwing a ball harshly at my chest winding me slightly, not exactly helping the sickness.

"I didn't sleep well" I tried to excuse myself throwing the ball to the ground with more force than I had anticipated resulting in a thick sludge flying from the ground and landing on Kenny's cheek.

"Frank!" He whined rubbing at his freckled cheek furiously trying to rid of the stain I had left.

"I can tell, you look like shit!" Grimshaw shook his head at me. The fucking prick. "Now get in your formations!" he clapped his hands at us as if he was Jurgen Klopp himself.

As much as I tried to carry on as normal, I could always count on James to tell that something was not right with me.

"You okay, man?" He raised an eyebrow as he stood next to me on the bitterly cold pitch.

"Yeah, probably, I don't really know." I sighed stretching my calves out. Coach Grimshaw appeared to be on one today, so I thought I was better to be prepared than have a pulled muscle later on tonight.

"Bullshit." James replied bluntly "You didn't even fucking say sorry to Kenny just! What's the little ginger prick ever done to you?"

I understood he was trying to joke and if my emotions weren't completely invested in somebody else, I maybe would have felt bad about how Kenny was covered in mud before practice had even begun.

"Hmm." I hummed unhappily. James was right, I was acting out of character but all I could think of was the ignored text I'd sent to Gerard from the night before.

"Tell me about it later." He reassuringly placed a comforting hand on my shoulder before jogging off to the centre of the pitch.

Although today's level of play was nowhere near what I'd call my best, I was still grateful for it. There were times that I had been running down the wing, the worn ball dancing between my boots and the brisk wind on my skin that I had almost forgotten last nights events. As long as I was distracted by the other love in my life, soccer, then he couldn't hurt me. Nobody could. That's why I felt overcome with frustration when Grimshaw blew his shrill whistle to indicate that practice was over. I had been so engulfed in distracting myself that I had reached a complete state of flow and those three hours I had used to escape my own mind had come to a much too abrupt end. For a brief moment, those sodden, neglected fields had felt as if they were a pristine pitch at Anfield but with the blow of the whistle also came my crashing sense of reality. I was still boring old Frank, I was still fucking miserable and I was still stuck in a tragic unrequited teenage love story.

"What was up with you today, man?" Harry asked me, raising one of his too bushy eyebrows in my direction. I'd always appreciated Harry, like me he had always felt as if his skin was a little too tight fitting and awkward. By no means was I trying to self diagnose myself with some form of mental illness because that was definitely not the case, I just sometimes felt as if I didn't quite belong anywhere. Harry had always been the same, his lanky frame was always hunched as if he didn't quite know how to pose his limbs and his thin glasses were always perched at an awkward angle on the tip of his nose. He was not what you would expect a goalkeeper to look like, but he definitely knew what he was doing with those oversized grubby gloves he always wore on the pitch.

"What do you mean?" I frowned trying to hide behind my water bottle. The thing was though, I had been excessively drinking ever since practice had ended as an excuse not to verbally join in with their conversation but I was running out of liquid to hide behind.

"You fucking sucked," Matt replied for him bluntly. Harry and Matt were best friends, always had been and always would be. They were like me and Gerard in some ways as they were polar opposites. Despite Matt's weird looking features and stubby body, he acted as if he was an Adonis or something. With his confidence, always came the whole truth. This wasn't necessarily a bad thing, you knew that if you wore an outfit that didn't quite go or you were coming across a little too desperate to a girl, Matt would tell you in the bluntest kind of way. That was not necessarily what I wanted right now though. Unlike me and Gerard, Matt and Harry despite their differences, would always act as if it was them two against the world, they also did not have Joe Delo interfering and ripping them apart.

"The fuck is that supposed to mean?" I almost snarled in Matt's direction. It was not exactly the harshest thing he had ever said to me, in fact far from it. One time, Gerard had nearly fought the guy as he told me that maybe if I was a little taller then I wouldn't be such an easy target from Joe and his friends, as if that was something I could change. I had to come between the two of them, which had resulted in my friends having an even bigger complex about Gerard. I could understand it, he treated them like shit and often acted as if they were the toxic ones but it wasn't quite enough to drag me away from him.

"I'm just saying you didn't seem your best that's all!" He threw his hands up in the air as if my anger was a loaded gun pointing between his eyes. Little did he know that it had been a miracle I had even been able to get here at all, let alone play and score one goal against the other practice team.

"Matt, you're such a cock sometimes you know that right?" Nathan smirked in an amused manner. Nathan was fairly recent to our group, only transferring schools just over a year ago. I had never met somebody more laid back than him, choosing to lay in the gutter but always looking up at the stars. Unlike myself and the others, Nathan had some strange obsession with pot despite his lung capacity not agreeing. That was just Nathan though, always nonchalant and always smelling slightly of weed.

"I'm just saying!" Matt argued again "We have our finals in a few weeks and we're not going to win if this dick doesn't stop daydreaming about that wannabe 'road man' are we?" From the way he used finger quotations around the term 'road man' I knew exactly who he was referring to. A roadman was a coined term recently that my friends always used to insult Gerard and his squad. It referred to his love of Ralph Lauren baseball caps and obsession with awful grime music. It was strange, usually, it did not bother me so much because I had to agree with them most of the time. Gerard was an idiot but he was also my idiot that for some reason today I felt more of a need to defend. The way Matt was talking about him as if he were not even a real person who had experienced real trauma caused the rage to build up inside of me and come spilling out my mouth in vile curse words.

"What the fuck do you mean by daydreaming you fucking cunt?" I snapped harshly taking all my friends by surprise, especially Matt. The thing about Matt though, was that he was also not the kind of guy to back away if he believed he was in the right.

"You know what I meant." He glared at me "You're obsessed with him. He could fucking kill somebody and you'd still find a way to defend him because he's got you under some fucking spell, Frank!"

I didn't know where this had come from, it was almost as if he could read my mind. Yesterday, my friends had begged me to come and see the new Avengers film with them but obviously, I'd refused as Friday nights were for me and Gerard which I don't think Matt had taken too kindly to. I also don't think me missing one of the easiest goals of the season had made me his biggest fan right now either.

"Matt!" James snapped aggressively at an angry looking Matt saving me from having to reply myself. The only person that hated my group bringing Gerard up more than me was James. I had no real idea why, I mean I knew they did not get along but it was almost as if James wanted to pretend he didn't exist contrasting my other friends who lived to gossip about his wild lifestyle. "Just leave it."

"Oh, here we go!" Matt exclaimed, "Be careful James, your feelings are showing."

Matt had not even concluded his sentence properly before James was pushing past him harshly causing him to stagger and crash into a bewildered looking Harry. James did not stop walking though, just continued storming off in the direction of his house despite us calling his name.

"Well done Matt!" Nathan said in a sarcastic manner clapping his big hands in Matt's guilty face.

"Why is he so upset?" I asked, genuinely confused as to why everybody, including my self, was taking Matt's words so harshly today.

"Nothing." Harry replied quickly "Matt I think we should go before you upset anybody else." He attempted a half-arsed joke before dragging his best friend away from us, muttering under his breath about being sick of something. I didn't have much time to think about the out of character altercation before Kenny came running back from the park's disgusting bathrooms, his once stained cheek now clear. As much as this sounded harsh, it was almost as if Kenny was the runt of the litter of the team. He constantly got shoved around and picked on and was merely told to accept it as football banter. I felt bad for him in a way but I had my own issues to deal with so babysitting Kenny for the rest of his life was not an option.

"What did I miss?" He asked in his high octave tone. It was almost as if Kenny, despite being 17, had not completely reached puberty as he still blended in with more of the under 16 team than ourselves but he was our Kenny and only ourselves could joke about that.

I tuned out of the conversation as I felt my phone buzz from my soccer bag.

**\- Come round later, u have to tell me what's wrong.**

James had sent me a text, and as much as I wanted to spend my night staring at the wall again, I knew I probably shouldn't. After I had thought about it, I felt a little optimistic about spending the night with James and even began to cheer up a little. That was though until I saw the little read receipt next to the text I had sent to Gerard last night with absolutely no hint of a reply.

"I'm going." I sighed unhappily and jammed my headphones in choosing some depressing Billie Eilish song to walk home to think about my own neglect. Fuck, I really was turning into a thirteen-year-old girl. I couldn't help it though, I'd fucked everything up for a mere few seconds where my fantasies had escaped the confinement of my precious mind.


	5. 5) I'll Call you in the Middle of Night with Hopes that you wanna Hear from me

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "But I made the mistake of giving away that I wanna call at the end of the day and talk about plans of wasting away with you."

\----------------

James had told me to be at his house for 7 o'clock but at 6 I had completely lost all of my inhibitions of looking desperate and had begun the short walk to where he lived. I had been going crazy locked in my bedroom constantly running last nights events over in my head. He had told me that he was going to ring me, and he was yet to even do that. I knew that he was awake though because Joe had put some stupid video on his social media of Gerard driving his car looking a little worse for wear. How could someone with such a high intelligence level be so stupid to drive so noticeably hung over? And why was he choosing to spend his lazy Saturday afternoons with people who usually entertained him in the night? My father had tried his best to drag an almost phatic conversation out of me about today's practice but I just couldn't seem to even entertain something as easy as that. My mind was like a bottled carbonated drink being shaken up with every mental image of what he could possibly be up to and I was one wrong comment away from exploding all over the walls. 

"Frank!" James asked in a confused manner when he answered the door, obviously not expecting the worst time manager he knew to be on his doorstep 40 minutes earlier than he had anticipated. He didn't seem angry about it though, more as if I had shown up with a million dollars as opposed to my miserable expression. "You're early...".

"I thought you said 6." I lied, probably badly. I was having to think about every word that was spilling out of my mouth because the events of last night were on the very tip of my tongue. Suppressing my feelings had been a lot easier when I hadn't got the constant reminder that he had kissed me. I would have felt better about the situation if things would have stuck to the script. He was merely teaching me the most basic act of affection, so why the hell did he have his body positioned so dangerously close to mine? 

"Frank?" James said waving a hand in front of my face "I said come in there's nobody home and I thought that we could order from that takeaway you like whilst you tell me what's wrong." 

"Oh, erm yeah sorry sounds good." Fuck, tonight was not going to be as easy as I had once believed.

 

\---

"and then I think that's why Kenny might have commitment issues," I said pretending to eat another slice of pizza when in reality I had just been faking eating the same one for the past 20 minutes. I had been talking about anything and everything with James to keep the conversation away from why I was not being myself, which included going into Kenny's family history on how we all believed he was far too attached to his mother for a healthy seventeen-year-old boy. 

"Yeah I agree, but Frank can we please stop talking about Kenny and instead discuss why you're not fighting me for this last slice of the pizza you chose like you normally do?" He raised an eyebrow at me, the inquisitive look of his olive-hued eyes causing the ghost of a butterfly in my stomach to flutter as they reminded me a little too much of somebody else's that I knew. 

"Not hungry," I claimed, snapping my eyes from his, not trusting myself to keep my feelings hidden if he began to pry. I was a closed book, and if he were to open and read me, I don't think he would have stopped until the story was complete. It wasn't as if I was ashamed of having feelings for another boy, I'd gotten over that a long time ago after those long nights of forcing myself to look at pictures of female bodies and crying after I couldn't see them in the same light as my friends did. It was more the fact that I didn't even think that I was gay, so did not know how to explain my sexuality if it were to be quizzed. The benefit to being a teenage boy was that almost everybody that was not overly feminine got assumed as straight until it was suggested otherwise, and I was yet to give off any suggestions. The only person I'd ever truly wanted was Gerard. Of course, when puberty had just hit me, he was not the only person who I had thought about being close to but he was the only person I could see myself being with. That was not an option though so my mindset was going to have to change. I did not think that I was Asexual either because the thought of never sharing a connection with anybody left my skin hot and uncomfortable. I wasn't stupid, I knew that identifying as gay wasn't easy but at least then I'd have a community in which I belonged, but as I'd previously stated, I didn't belong anywhere. Now that Gerard had given me a small taste of the life that I had wanted but then snatched it all away, I felt more isolated than ever. So isolated that I wasn't even sure if James could save me this time. 

"Bullshit man! I've witnessed you finish everybody else's food off even after demolishing your own. You can't be full, you're never full!" He poked my side a little. I appreciated him for trying to search for my normal self in this newfound darkness, but he wasn't going to find me. Around my friends, I was always finding something to laugh at and if there was nothing, I'd find a way to make something. I don't think I had truly laughed all day though which was causing concern to spread all over James' face. "Did _he_ do something?" He added barely above a whisper causing my gaze to snap up from the now past it slice of pizza. I was only so shocked because James never brought up Gerard as I said, he tended to pretend my best friend did not exist. When James was forced to acknowledge Gerard, he always seemed to talk about him like he was a villain in a fairy story, not a real human that had been around ever since we'd become friends ourselves. His tone seemed different tonight though, Gerard was real and he knew it. He just knew that this had something to do with him.

"I don't want to talk about it, James!" I complained willing him to stop pushing down on me. When you tortured somebody, if they were dying to tell somebody the information they were being pressed for, then it was just inevitable that the truth was going to come spilling out. Okay, so I may have been a little melodramatic, I mean I wasn't on some medieval torture machine but it felt pretty close the way that James was probing into my mind with his questions. 

"I swear to God if he's fucked you over once again I'll-" his cheeks flushed with passion, his mind raced with all the possibilities of things Gerard could have done and his eyes turned dark with venom. James had never truly gotten on with Gerard, even in middle school before I was even friends with him, but as he grew older his hate got stronger. It also did not help the countless times that Gerard had not so secretly made me fucking miserable, leaving James to pick up the pieces. 

"Leave him out of it he doesn't give a fuck about me James." I sighed in defeat. I knew that James hearing that Gerard did not care about me would raise his spirits, he felt me clinging on to my childhood best friend was like pulling at a nettle, pointless and painful. "What has he done?" He asked again, more forcefully this time.

"James-"

"Tell me!"

"No!"

"Frank just fucking-"

"He kissed me." I clamped my hands over my mouth as soon as I said it, and I felt as if James wanted to do the same. I tried so desperately to claw the unforgettable words back inside my mind, but it was futile. James had heard me and comprehended everything. The shaken bottle that was my mind had just exploded everywhere, coating James in my deepest, darkest secret. "He- he what?" He stuttered, a look of utter confusion spread across his face. It felt almost humorous that James was allowed to be confused at this! This was my life and I couldn't even fucking understand it!

"Fuck, I didn't mean to tell you it's just it got too much and-" I gave up my sentence in defeat and instead shoved my heavy head in my hands willing the ground to open up and swallow me whole.

 "How the fuck did that happen?" He snapped at me as if it was my fault that any of this had happened. It was never my choice to fall in love with Gerard, it had just happened. If it were a choice however, I would have preferred to have been thrown to wild dogs, it would have hurt less. 

"He just said he'd teach me stuff but he hasn't replied to my messages or anything since. You know him, he usually pesters me to go to the shop with him or something for his Saturday hangover cures." I fretted, not being able to stop myself from spilling more truths to a furious looking James.

"He's an absolute piece of shit. Who the fuck offers to kiss their best friend?" He threw his hands in the air not understanding the gravity of the situation "but most of all, why did you let him?" 

He acted as if asking that caused him pain. It couldn't hurt him though, it was hurting me! Who the fuck cared about my reason for doing it, it had happened and there was no taking it back no matter how much I wanted to.

"It started off innocent and stuff, I promise but he like ,fuck, I don't know how to tell you this James! He just kissed me as if he meant it but it's Gerard and of course he didn't fucking mean it!" I whined feeling defeated. Although waving the white flag that I had kept hidden in my pocket for many years was embarrassing to me, it felt a little good to have the heavy weight on my shoulders eased a little, even if it was only temporary relief. 

"Did you want him to mean it?" He asked in a voice so small I barely heard it. I had always envied James, he was so full of natural confidence and it came across in his mannerisms. He was not cocky like Matt, more at an ideal state of self-belief. He didn't seem like that now though, he looked as if the answer to my question might set off an explosive device which is what it felt like to me. 

"Don't make me say it." My cheeks turned hot under my skin, the warmth spreading slowly to my ears like venom snaking through my veins. I'd rehearsed my confessions so many times in my own head that this was the least likely scenario that I had dreamt of. I never thought it would be James who would have been the first person to hear of my love for somebody who I couldn't have but I guess if I'd learnt anything in the past 24 hours, it was that life was unpredictable and could change at any moment. I felt nervous that I had now confessed something I'd spent my whole life trying to deny as now it was audible and someone knew. Someone knew the information that could kill me if the one who it was about were to find out. 

"You like him, don't you?" He stared at me with something that could not quite be described as shock, almost more like a crushing disappointment. I mean, I could not blame him for feeling saddened at my love for Gerard, he treated James like shit and it must not have been easy to have somebody like that in your life all the time.

"I love him." I almost squeaked out the confession. "I have done ever since I can remember." 

There it was. The final nail in the coffin, everything I'd worked so hard to deny was now laid out on the table for James to see. 

"I already know." He sighed. His response shocked me enough to drag my face from the barrier that was my own hands to see him chewing anxiously on the skin around his thumb, something I had never seen him do before.

"You what?" I asked in utter confusion. I had been so sure that the guarding of my true feelings was so tight that not even I liked to admit them to myself. 

"I'm not an idiot Frank. You look at him as if he knows the fucking meaning to life and every time he brings some girl around you get in this weird mood. It's obvious."

How could it be obvious? I'd worked so hard to avoid that.

"Do you hate me?" I asked anxiously, waiting for him to kick me out of his house for falling in love with his mortal enemy. I was no better of a friend to James than Gerard was to me, and that killed me because I cared about James more than anybody. Well, almost anybody.He sighed heavily, his shaky breath coming out long before any more words left his pursed lips.

"No. I think you're a fucking mug Frank but how could I hate you? You mean everything to me." He reached over the table and grabbed my trembling hand.

"You're not going to tell anyone are you?" I asked desperately, almost begging him to keep my secret. James may not have hated me for this, but I could have guaranteed that Joe Delo would not be so kind.

"Of course I'm not!" He scoffed at me in a way that made me feel guilty for even questioning his loyalty to me.

"Thanks, James. I love ya, man!" I almost cried out in sheer relief as I tackled my second closest friend into the biggest hug I could muster.

"Yeah yeah, course you do." He turned one corner of his mouth up into an almost smile but hugged me back regardless of how bad of a friend I had just been to him.

As I lay by James' side that night, I felt relaxed for the first time in what felt like years. Things were not perfect, but he knew and I no longer had to pretend to him that I found the girls who chased him attractive. He knew and he was going to keep my secret. It was weird after our hug had ended, he had almost insisted we'd put on some gory film, which I know for a fact he did not like. I did not want to question as to why we had left the biggest topic of conversation since Harry losing his virginity at an almost standstill and instead welcomed the grotesque imagery on the screen, keeping my mind far away from anything romance related.


	6. 6) If music was the food of love I'd be a fat romantic slob

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "I wish that she had either cared for me or let me be but she chased me from my mind and from my home. I wrote her sixteen songs but ended up alone."

I wished that I could have said that he bothered to message me over the entire weekend, but of course, he didn't. He left me pacing in my room alone back and forth until I was almost sure I would create a hole in the floor. I'd left James' house on the Sunday morning because he had to work. As much as I had wanted to cling to him like a fucking baby, I knew that was not an option. We did not speak about Gerard again the entire time I was there even though we both knew that was the reason I had been checking my phone every five minutes. There was nothing though, just updates from his friends on their Instagram accounts of all the reckless things they were doing. From what they had posted, he had appeared to spend the weekend in a hazy state of intoxication, barely sober enough to open his eyes. It was almost as if the person who he had been on Friday did not exist and I had simply imagined what I had wanted to happen. How was it still so vivid in my mind then? The only thing worse than not seeing Gerard was seeing a version of him I did not want to see. That is why I couldn't say I was exactly thrilled about seeing him in sixth form when Monday morning finally came about. I knew he was on one of those paths of self-destruction where he did not care who he hurt in the process. If drugs damaged his body, he would take more, if girls fell in love with him, then he would fuck their best friends and worse of all if anybody tried to stop him; he would ruin them. I'd seen many people attempt to fight Gerard, but he and his friends were just too powerful at this point. They had older, scarier friends that had left school a long time ago that weren't just misbehaving teenagers. They were real thugs, and people did not want to cross them. I thanked God every day for Gerard's slightly overbearing, law-abiding mother as some days I felt that it was the only thing that stopped him following in his older friends path. 

"Frank, hurry up!" My mother called in a state of melodramatic panic from downstairs. I'd outright refused to get the bus nowadays as I had been practically spoilt with options of transport. I hated the school bus, it was full of prepubescent, overloud and annoying twelve-year-olds that I refused to face alone now that Gerard always drove to school. He did most days pick me up on his way through but on Mondays, he did not have to be there until after our morning break which right now I was thankful for as it meant I did not have to awkwardly sit in the car with him. On Monday and Friday mornings, I forced my mom to take me even though it left her fractionally late for work. That's why that even if I spent just a second too long brushing my teeth in the morning, she lost her shit.

"M'coming!" I mumbled almost tumbling down the stairs as I attempted to pull my jumper over my head at the same time. My eyes were again, heavy with sleep due to constant reruns of my favourite ever moment going through my head late at night. The worst part was though I couldn't even fully enjoy the memory as every time I thought about it, I was plagued with the anxiety of him not wanting anything to do with me anymore. 

"You're going to be so late." My mom sighed unhappily, only becoming more annoyed when the radio presenter disclosed the traffic report on her route to work. I didn't know why she was in such a rush to get to that Hell hole anyway if it were me I would have taken all the time in the world. 

"I'm not" I silently begged her to stop pestering me. 

It seemed everybody in my life was niggling away at me piece by piece and I was pretty sure that soon there would be nothing left to take. 

"Did you get any revision done this weekend?" She asked knowing full well that I didn't. Okay, I got it. I knew that my university entry exams were in a few months and so far I was no closer to knowing about the psychodynamic theory of narcolepsy than I was 6 months ago, but I felt as if I had deserved a break this weekend. I didn't even want to do psychology and science, I only took those classes because Gerard had forced me to. I did actually enjoy psychology, it was the only class that we had together with no one else interfering; I only wish I could have said the same about science. His stupid squad were in that class and I only had Kenny to protect me from the persistent gay and dork comments which wasn't exactly like having a bodyguard. No, the only classes I truly cared about passing were sports and music. Gerard had opted to take music until his friends made him feel stupid for it and insisted he took geography instead. They made him believe he was talentless, despite being the best singer I knew of and had insisted on him learning about pedestrian flows which in the long run, was useless to him. Thanks to my involvement with the music department though, I sometimes managed to convince him to work on songs with me and those were my favourite times. When he was doing something like that, it was the only real time I saw the real him. His eyes lit up with inspiration in a way that no girl he fucked could ever achieve in him and in those few moments I got the most lucid form of him that still existed. Sports, however, that was definitely not a Gerard thing, that was my thing. He dragged himself to the gym numerous times a week more so because of his fear of weight gain than enjoyment but that was it. He didn't watch sport, he didn't talk about it and he only really seemed to care if I was playing it so Lord forgive me for believing he cared about me. "Frank, I'm talking to you." She snapped me out of my daydreaming causing me to realise I had ignored her for an uncomfortable amount of time. I didn't know who had pissed in her cornflakes this morning, but I just wished she'd keep me far away from her menopausal attitude. 

"No mom, you know that I didn't. Happy?"

"What has gotten into you?" She looked a little upset that I had snapped at her, causing my heart to hurt a little. I wasn't like Gerard, I couldn't just hurt people and not care. The way my mother turned her head away from me to hide her upset, causing her perfectly set curls to bounce only made me feel guilty.

"Sorry," I mumbled choosing to pull at a loose thread on my too big black school jumper. Anything to keep my hands occupied and stop them from shaking.

"It's okay, muffin." She nodded showing me she had forgiven me for my out of character outburst. I was becoming less like myself every day and I needed to claw back to the person that I once was and wanted to be.

 "Is everything okay? You seem off."

"I'm okay. Just stressed." I lied, it was easier to do that now that I had slightly shared my load with James.

 "It'll be worth it in the end when you're off to university for that sports science degree!" She said proudly squeezing my leg. I had been freaked out about the thought of university, up routing my life seemed daunting at first but maybe it was for the best. A fresh start. I still had over 10 months left in this place though so I couldn't get too ahead of myself yet. The morning went uneventful as suspected, he wasn't there to cause a stir in me. The only thing that had happened was Kenny getting upset that our group was fighting and forcing us to sit down at our table in the hall and talk things through until they were resolved. It didn't take long before we were completely over the altercation that had happened on Saturday and were now talking about our predictions on whether Mo Salah was actually going to leave Liverpool or not.

"Ginger fag." A booming voice came behind Kenny's head as it snapped forward with force. There above him stood Gerard's friends, Ed with his hand raised above Kenny where he had just smacked him for no apparent reason. It deemed my friendship with Gerard was not only disapproved by my friends but also his. Due to our friendship, they seemed to find tormenting me and my friends absolutely hilarious. We weren't exactly the most unpopular group, I mean all the girls our age wanted James' attention in particular but this only seemed to infuriate them more. They couldn't stand the fact that James was well liked and respected and did everything in their power to knock him down. Over our table stood Gerard's main friends, although he himself was not present yet, probably still sleeping off the drugs left in his bloodstream placed there by the weekend. There was the one who had hit Kenny, Ed, a complete oaf of a human that made me question if Neanderthals had actually gone instinct. His head was unusually big which he had tried his best to cover with his lazy mop of brown hair but had failed. Then there was Jesse, who's birthday it had been the Saturday that had just been. He was what was deemed stereotypically attractive, his muscles far too big for his shirt and just screamed a copious amount of steroid intake and his hair pulled tightly into a weird looking man bun on his head. He thought he looked edgy, I just thought he looked ridiculous. Stood next to Jesse was Tom, who there was not much to say on. The only vaguely interesting thing about this guy was that his brother had been featured in some kind of famous rap song. That's all his life was though, living in his brother's overpowering shadow only highlighting how boring he truly was himself. Then there was Ross, Gerard's very own Kenny. I mean, he wasn't as underdeveloped as Kenny and people definitely did not cross him but I knew his friends treated him like a chew toy but without the humour attached. Then there were their tagalongs like Conner but all they did was follow the main six, offering nothing more than drug collections or a free house for partying. Although I was far from impressed at their random act of violence, I was also incredibly thankful that Joe was not with them as he was always the cruellest, especially to Kenny. Although Kenny did not speak of it often, I was pretty sure that himself and Joe used to go to some rugby club together when they were young and used to get on at least a little bit. Joe, however, liked to deny the fact he used to spend his Sunday mornings with Kenny and now insisted on making his life a misery.

"Bless you, you all seem to have forgotten about your ginger friend," James said not even looking up from the bagel he was eating but challenged their hypocritical insult as Ross also supported red hair. It was so stupid, their insults sounded like they had been coined from the mouths of 12-year-olds, but they still made me uncomfortable. If Gerard was not there to protect me from their cruel worlds, I did not like to intervene as in that moment I did not think my self-esteem could handle any more rejection, so I was even more grateful for James' confidence. 

"Yeah, but Ross isn't a fag like you lot." Jesse folded his arms causing a stir of laughter from the other members of Joe's brain dead entourage. They threw the term fag around like it was harmless, like sleeping with a copious amount of STI riddled females was in any way better. I may have been dreading the thought of university, but I for one could not wait to get far away from these close-minded individuals. We were saved from replying but in the worst kind of way as in that moment, Gerard and Joe walked into the hall pushing each other, joking around, half an hour earlier than anticipated. 

"Joe!" Ross waved enthusiastically at his much bigger, more intimidating friend. As much as I probably hated Ross the least out of all of them, he could be so stupid. I'm not sure why he thought it would be a good idea to call Joe over to our table who were just trying their best to get on with the already dragging Monday. Joe appeared to agree as I saw his beady eyes turn sour as he locked on to my own, that had been staring at him a little too long. I was only staring at Joe though because I did not want to stare at Gerard and he appeared to not want to stare at me. He kept his eyes glued to the floor, hiding behind his baseball hat that seemed to be glued to his head more often than not. Despite currently hating him, even the smallest of glances at him was enough to make the warm feeling spread throughout my body. Although I had prayed for the opposite, kissing him had made my infatuation with him worse and I was aching to have his devotion once again even if it was only for a few seconds longer. I doubted we were even still friends though because he made no effort to stop Joe bounding over to our table.

"What you looking at, fag?" Joe asked me once he reached our table, that appeared to be the squads new fucking meeting spot. A few paces before him stood an apprehensive looking Gerard, choosing to stand and show Tom something on his phone rather from intervene in an attack that was technically his fault. If Gerard had not been friends with Joe, he probably would have left my friends alone for the most part, so yes, it was his fault. "I'm talking to you Frankie boy!" He added. The use of my childhood name made me almost cringe with the way he used it to mock me. He knew that Gerard called me that sometimes, and had never let it go. I was just thankful he didn't know why there was a ladybug emoticon next to my name in Gerard's phone as I was pretty sure he would never let either of us live it down. 

"Not everybody wants to fuck you, Delo." James sighed, finding the recurrent comment trivial. That was the worst thing about Joe Delo, that despite his incredibly average looks, he truly believed that girls spoke to them for him and not Gerard and Jesse. Of course, Joe was not a stranger to female attention, but I was pretty sure a lot of them used him for his beautiful friend. 

"Yeah but Frank does, don't you Frankie?" He came over to me and ruffled my hair, much to my annoyance. Although I was probably the most basic looking person with the most average haircut, it still pissed me off. I'd perhaps spent a little too long expertly placing the boring dark brown hair that fell over my eyes this morning as if Gerard would ever fucking notice anyway. 

"Fuck off," I snapped at Joe trying my best to flatten my hair that he had just caused to stick up "I'd rather fuck Kenny than go anywhere near your chlamydia riddled dick."

"Ooh! Gerard, your boyfriend is feisty today isn't he?" He replied in a mocking tone. He didn't know anything about me and Gerard, he just thought our friendship was weird because I was not one of them. Gerard had reassured me that no matter how much Joe tried to become between us, that he most definitely wouldn't, even though right now I didn't believe him. 

"He's not my fucking boyfriend, Delo," Gerard said from the back of the group. I was shocked, his voice was not friendly like usual but instead agitated and on edge. Joe referred to me as Gerard's boyfriend all the time and usually, he did not retaliate which only solidified in my mind more that he was well and truly finished with me.

"Then why do you keep this fucking moron around us?" Joe said harshly, obviously not taking too kindly to the fact that I'd brought up his little doctors trip that had happened a few months ago. 

"Just fuck off, Joe," James said once again, only becoming more invested now that Gerard's name had been brought up. He had slammed his unfinished bagel on the table and had now slammed his hands down, I think even startling Joe at his forcefulness.

"Are you going to let them talk to me like that, G?" Joe asked in bewilderment at James' sudden outburst.

"Just fucking leave it, Frank. You're acting like a dick." Gerard snapped at me, not having the courage to even look at me. My heart hammered against my chest with something more than rage. How was this altercation my fault? I'd made one comment and now I was being treated as if everything was my doing. 

"Are you joking me? Fuck off, Gerard!" I got to my feet, fuelled by something I wasn't quite sure of myself. I had obviously made a hasty judgement as I knew full well I was not going to do anything to them, so me standing up and inevitably backing down was going to make me look like an utter fool. 

"Ooh! He's on his fucking feet, G!" Joe mocked not helping the situation. I had seen Gerard in altercations like this before, it usually resulted in the person getting shoved around by him and his friends so I braced myself for it. He had never physically hurt me before, but I'm pretty sure from the furious yet disgusted look smothered on his face it was inevitably going to come. 

"Go fuck yourself." He merely said shoving past me, but walking off out the hall and towards his Geography lesson. I think everybody was shocked. Nobody spoke to Gerard like that, even me. Yet here I was, still on my feet after telling him to fuck off. 

"Don't get brave," Joe warned me as my whole body fizzed with adrenaline watching the rest of them follow him outside. If I wasn't so utterly miserable that he now apparently hated me, then I would have been elated.

 —-

"I'm proud of you." James came behind me as the bell rang and whispered in my ear so quietly it caused my skin to prickle under his breath. Despite my friends best efforts, I had insisted that I didn't want to talk about what had happened in the hall. I was still freaked out that he didn't want to talk to me and was way too anxious about the fact I had Science and Psychology with him later on. 

"Yeah, well how come I feel like shit?" I sighed leaning my head back on his shoulder. I knew my friendship with James was a little weird to some, but it definitely was not the weirdest friendship I had or should I say did have. 

"Because it's going to take time for you to see him for what he really is. I think this was a good thing though, I think it was the start of you getting over him." He replied, speaking into my hair to avoid the inquisitive ears of our other friends.

"What are you two whispering about?" Matt frowned, not ever liking to miss out of any interesting information.

"Nothing, I gotta go I have music!" I replied quickly pulling myself away from James and running towards my class so no further questions could be asked.For the next hour, I sat there with the such an attitude that not even listening to Frank Turner could help me. In class, I did not have the luck of a practical task today, instead, it was all theory work meaning my mind was left without the comforting sounds of a thrashing guitar in the studio. That's why I had put my headphones in and was blasting my own music, much to my teacher's annoyance.

"You know I'm lenient in this class, dude" Mr Holdgate came over sitting in the seat next to my blank worksheet "but even you have to admit I can't let you listen to this music if you're not going to even write about your practical work last month." He was referring to the cover that I and Gerard had recorded of the very Frank Turner song I had been listening to before he rudely interrupted my mood. I had played the guitar and he had sung so excuse me for not wanting to hear the love of my life sing a stupid heartbreak song. Although I was not the greatest, I liked playing the guitar, not as much as soccer, but it was still a small escape. However, it just was not fun when I did it on my own. Music was our thing and now it was ruined and I was stuck writing about the stupid techniques of his stupid voice. 

"Come on Frank." He rudely grabbed my phone and changed the song to the recording we had done. Mr Holdgate was not a usual teacher, he was young, fresh out of university and still clinging on to the dreams that his death metal band would somehow make it big someday. He usually was my favourite, his relaxed attitude to headphones and banter making me feel truly comfortable but today he most definitely wasn't. No, today he could go and fuck himself. 

_"I've had many different girls inside my bed, but only one or two inside my head._ " The all too familiar voice blared through my headphones, causing my heart to physically ache for him. The small giggle that came after that line had been caused by me mouthing slut at him when he was singing. I could have cropped it out, but I didn't want to. Instead of writing about this, for the second time today I got out of my chair causing the room to look round at the awful screeching noise it had caused on the cheap linoleum flooring.

"Where are you going, Frank?" Mr Holdgate asked looking up from the girl he was helping.

"Feel sick." I excused myself quickly and practically ran out of the room.It wasn't exactly a lie, I went to the bathroom and finally threw up the anxieties that had been building up relentlessly since Friday night. I should have gone to the nurse and gone home, but for some reason, I didn't. It was almost as if I'd forgotten I was going to have to sit across from him for two whole hours this afternoon. I spent my whole lunch with my headphones glued in once again, wishing for the hands on the clock to halt to save me from the impending science lesson. That was obviously not going to work though, and before I had time to think of a plan Kenny was pulling on my arm dragging me to our biology lesson. I was almost glad that our class consisted of the majority of Gerard's friends as it meant that at the start of the year he had chosen to sit with them instead of me and Kenny. At the time, it had hurt me but I was now glad for it. With the way our class went, I wouldn't exactly say I was disappointed but it was almost anti-climatic. I had expected Gerard to make my life a misery in such a way that I had witnessed him do to others that had crossed him before, but he didn't. He sat with his friends and ignored my existence. I used to think the worst thing he could possibly do to me was treating me like I was nothing, it wasn't though. The worst thing that he could possibly do was ignore me as I'd found out in that dreadful hour.

 

There was only one event that happened in that whole class. There was one particular moment where he had caught me staring at him for probably the third time and it appeared to make him snap.

"And then she begged me to fuck her." He said loudly, a bemused smirk spreading across his face. 

"Is that why you disappeared on Friday night?" Joe asked, his eyes wild with anticipation at his friend's disrespectful tales of the weekend.

"Yep. I fucked her all weekend." He glared up at me from his table where again, I had caught myself staring again. I chewed on my lip anxiously, wanting nothing more than to scrunch my eyes up and crawl into a ball. I couldn't make him aware that he'd hurt me though. I knew he did not know how I felt about him but how the fuck could he do that to me? How could he kiss me like he actually meant it and then go and have sex with some random girl that very same night? My memories flashed back to that stupid girl from the year below he had his hands all over in that video causing me to bite down on my finger hard to get the intrusive images out of my head. It didn't work though, my heart was still broken. Just a week ago, I may not have known the softness of his lips but I also did not know the cruelness of his words and I think I preferred it that way.

 

I dreaded our next lesson. It was psychology, the one lesson we had where I could not escape him. I sat next to him on a desk on our own, far away from the salvation of my friends. That's why I took my sweet time walking up the rickety old stairs of the old school building, taking my time to notice every chip of baby blue paint on the walls. Even I could not make that 2-minute walk last forever though, and before I knew it I was at the big wooden door of my class. When I got the courage to walk in the room, I was almost knocked over in relief when he was not there. I was already 5 minutes late, so where the hell was he?

"Nice of you to join us, Frank" My teacher, Mrs Wisher said bluntly "Have you not got your shadow with you today? He's late as well." I shook my head profusely not wanting her to question me where Gerard was. If I knew that, I wouldn't have been going stir crazy now, would I?


	7. 7) He's Pinched your Bird and he'll probably Kick your Head in

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "I said I wasn't sad to see her go but I'm only pretending you know"

\--------------------------------

It had reached Wednesday and he still had not bothered to show up to school or message me at any point. His friends were here and were still as tormenting as ever, but where he had gone was a mystery. James was obviously elated at this, he could finally live out his dreams of Gerard not existing because he could not see him and I did not want to talk about him. I struggled though because although I did not verbalise anything, nothing else could run through my mind but the green of his eyes. It was utterly futile trying to describe the gut feeling I had because I'm pretty sure no-one in this fucked up world had ever been this hurt. Before I would have said those who claimed to have died of a broken heart were melodramatic, but now I think I might join them. No matter how much I scrunched my duvet over my head, wishing the world away, I could not disappear. I wanted to feel nothing at all. I would trade in any happiness I'd ever felt to stop this feeling spreading through my veins. It was almost as if my unhappiness was a thick black liquid, seeping through my body and into my mind, slowly shutting everything down. Everyone had begun to notice that I was not myself, including my family and friends. I didn't have the heart to laugh or even pay attention to things since Monday because I could not drag my mind away from the ideology that I had ruined everything. How could I have ever been stupid to fall in love with someone so damaged? It had been stupid and selfish and I was most definitely paying the price for it.

The relief I had felt on Monday had quickly turned to dread as the bell rang on Wednesday afternoon to signal the ending of class. Although I almost despised him, I could not help my concern for Gerard. He had never had the best mental health record and to not hear from him at all for three days was increasingly concerning to me. Although in fits of rage I may have wished for his life to become a misery, I knew I never truly meant it. I begged for him not to be in that dark place again that he sometimes got so lost in, it was almost impossible to grab him out. I knew that he had been taking some medication called Citalopram or something, he had told me in confidence when the last drug hadn't worked but if he had stayed out all weekend then he would not have been taking it. He would rather become a burnt out, numb excuse of a human being than admit to Joe Delo that his mother had dragged him to the doctors kicking and screaming because yet again, he could not seem to drag himself out of bed. When one has a past as troubling as Gerard's, they simply cannot rid of the memories just because things change and he is not that person anymore. They would haunt him forever, and I had been the only one to truly know the extent of just how horrifying they could be.

Gerard's mental health had gotten better for a while, or at least he claimed that it had. The more I pestered him about how he was feeling, the more he fake laughed and claimed for everything to be okay. I didn't want him to go into that dark place again because this time I was not sure if he would even let me in to save him. My mother had claimed that Bethany said he had flu, but I knew that was a lie. If Gerard was ill, then he would have called me to complain about how close to death he felt in his usual melodramatic way. Like a sucker though, I would always go round and sit with him until he felt better where he would then inevitably ditch me for a party or girl. No, he hadn't called which meant he was not ill. Physically ill anyway.

I was interrupted from my mind once again obsessing over the one who did not want me by a forceful shove on my shoulders. The push was so strong that it had nearly knocked me off my feet, only being saved from this fate by James who helped me stay upright. I had once again dragged myself to soccer practice that evening, he was not going to take that from me like he took everything else. Despite the cold autumn chill, and the purple sky only eliminated by the overbearing floodlights, I had genuinely been enjoying myself. That was until, Toby, a guy I thought had been my friend, had tried to knock me to the ground with no hint of humour.

"What the fuck, Toby?" I asked squaring up my shoulders to the guy who apparently wanted to fight. I wasn't exactly one for fighting, and to be honest the opportunity rarely presented itself to me but I wasn't going to let somebody push me around.

"Tell your fucking boy to stay away from Jessica!" He screamed in my face. Jessica was Toby's girlfriend who he refused to acknowledge was incredibly annoying and said 'like' just a little too much. No, Toby was completely in love with Jessica and although we all mocked him for the way he acted like a teenage girl, I had been genuinely happy that he'd found someone.

"What the fuck are you talking about?" I asked looking around at my equally confused stricken friends. None of my friends knew Jessica, she was from a different school and hated the chill of practice so rarely came.

"Gerard," he replied bluntly. Of course, it always had something to do with Gerard.

"What did he do, Toby?" I asked in genuine bewilderment.

"He- he fucked her." He collapsed to his knees and sobbed in his hands that were placed protectively around his face. We were a football team, it was not exactly usual to have one of the biggest, most masculine guys on the team to break down in fits of tears at my feet but it left me both furious and unsure of what to do. I was not good with emotional people unless they were Gerard, so I just stood over Toby where his best friend Joshua dragged him to his feet and away from me blinking aimlessly at him. My mouth was hung open with confusion, Gerard had caused one of the strongest guys I knew to just completely crumble with one stupid action.

"Wh-when?" I stuttered out to the rest of the team who were watching the whole spectacle.

"Like last night, she just told him before practice. He's cut up about it." Toby's other friend Callum said awkwardly. Nobody knew what to do, nobody had ever seen anybody on the team cry let alone Toby.

"Boys!" Grimshaw yelled at us "keep your high school drama off the pitch!" Dispersing the crowd that had gathered around me.

"You okay Frank?" He put a firm hand on my shoulder, only reminding me of how numb my body felt right to its very core. "I saw that testosterone jumped up idiot push you."

"I'm fine." I lied not wanting Toby to be punished because I fully deserved the shove that he had given me. "I- I gotta go." I scooped up my kit bag from around my feet and ran off in the direction of the toilets, without even bothering to take my football boots off.

I ran into the cesspit like bathrooms at the park which I usually would have avoided at all hours, especially in the dark. When I was younger and I needed the bathroom on those long Wednesday night practices after drinking all my water in the first half, I would almost make myself ill with holding it in. The urge to pee was never strong enough to overpower the fear I once had held for these run down stalls. They were gross in the day, rarely checked by services and when they were, it was often just to restock the hand towels. Due to its neglect, it had become a hotspot for a drug addiction breading ground. My mother had warned me many times to stay away from any possible needles and paraphernalia, but she needn't have worried because if I was in there, it was usually out of desperation and as quick as humanly possible. In the night though, the place took on a whole different aura. The purple hue from the night sky, far away from the football floodlights, only illuminated the shadows of the overgrowing trees more. As the wind blew one of the branches it caused an alarming shadow, I shuddered thinking that somebody else could be in the bathroom with me. It appeared that I was also in a new apparent state of self-destruction though because I was too heartbroken to care. I wanted the darkness to engulf me and never let me go, it could not be more horrific than the endless pit I was falling into in my own head. I collapsed against the grime covered off-white tiled walls breathing heavily trying to calm my nerves. My breaths were shuddery and disjointed making my brain go into overdrive to not get into a state of panic.

 _one..two..three_ I counted to myself trying to come away from this state of hypo-arousal that was not going to end well in a place like this. No-one was going to find me in here and I feared what would happen if I did fully let myself become overwhelmed. I was just so hurt. How could he have done something like that to me? Of course, it ripped me apart inside to know he had been with another girl as if the one from the weekend had not been enough for him but that was not it. I knew that his obsessions with females was probably a reflection of the rejection he'd faced earlier in life so I tried not to take it personally but he had broken our agreement so now it was. He had agreed to me that he would not fuck over anybody in my team because we all needed to be focused and have a good cohesion if we were ever going to win this league. This was my penultimate challenge with this team as after the next tournament we were going to go our separate ways for university, only reuniting at holidays. The final playoffs may not have been important to him but he knew how much they meant to me. Not only had he fucked up my friendship with Toby, but he had also now ruined our on-field relationship meaning that it was just another broken link in the ever approaching disaster that was my life.

After sitting in the bathroom trying my hardest to be normal again, I finally got to my feet and hauled my belongings with me.

"Frank!" James called my name from the park gates. The practice had ended over an hour ago and I dreaded to think he'd been stood at the unsafe side of town by himself in the cold waiting for me. Just seeing the good on his face was enough to calm me down a little. Despite his chattering teeth and the goosebumps that littered his arms he still smiled at me appearing genuinely happy that he had seen me. "You okay, bud?"

"No." I replied shakily "I hate him, James, I hate him I hate him I hate him!" I kicked the fence with force causing it to shudder.

"You think I don't? I'm glad you're finally joining the ' _Gerard's a prick_ ' club." He smirked making me feel a little better.

"I can't believe he would do that to me, just when I was concerned that his depression had-" Shit. I was most definitely not meant to tell James that.

"His depression? Frank, are you delusional? He's never been depressed he just uses it as a way to get you to come to his beck and call whenever it suits him!" James did not know about those hours I'd spent on those damp lonely nights trying to convince Gerard that his life was worth living so I did not expect him to understand. He did not see him at his very worse when he had not gotten out of bed for a week straight, his hair matted and greasy with long forgotten tears stained on his cheeks so how could he ever understand? I knew that it was wrong but Gerard had really hurt me at that moment and for the first time in my life I did not give a shit about his mental illness. I had spent the past few hours tormenting myself with worry when in reality he had just been fucking up my life.

So with that, my sadness turned to anger which did not ease until my friends were gathered around before our final period of the day on Friday afternoon. Gerard had still not shown up to school but I had stopped pestering my mom as to why every five seconds. I didn't care nor did I want to know. That didn't mean that I didn't love him still, but a lot had changed over the past week that was making it hard for me to keep up with. I still screamed into my pillow in the middle of the night trying to muffle the frustrations of me crying out for him, and I still checked his seat every day on his table in the hall but that was it. I didn't try and call him or stop by his house because I think that after this baptism of fire, I was finally giving up on him.

———-

"So, are we going to play the new Fifa at mine tonight or what boys?" Nathan asked, his smoky smelling clothing infiltrating my olfactory system causing triggering memories of Gerard to come to the front of my mind.

"Yes," I replied quickly causing them all to snap their necks up and look at me in confusion. It was Friday, and there was only usually one place that I would be on a Friday.

"Are you not going to Ger-" Matt began to ask

"Nope. I need a fucking drink."

I didn't know what was more shocking to my friends, the fact I was not going home in Gerard's overpriced car tonight or the fact me, the advocate for sports health, was insisting we got so drunk we could not stand up the day before one of our most important practices.

After deliberation, James slapped his hands together causing us all to jump "I'm there!" He agreed showing me I was not going to have to let off steam alone tonight.


	8. 8) I tried, I really did try but I can't get her off of my mind

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "A spinning room and an aching head is all that she left me"

I had probably been drunk a handful of times in my whole seventeen years of life, and each of those had been Gerard's fault. I used to not particularly like the feeling of losing my inhibitions as I was always afraid of what might overflow from my mind, but what else had I got to lose? That's why I'd made the decision to fill my now lonely Friday night with the bitter taste of Nathan's father's whiskey.

My eighteenth birthday was right around the corner, which meant so was Gerard's. I had been dreading it though, at least with him being underage it meant he at least had some restraints. With a valid ID, however, was going to come to a whole new world of different girls and drugs at bars he was eager to be let in to. Himself and his friends had been planning his birthday for months now as he was one of the last ones to reach the milestone and they claimed they were going to celebrate their new found freedom in the worst kind of way. Gerard's coming of age was an impending disaster that I could only sit and watch happen. His devotion for drinking had always made me feel inferior because of my distaste for the same liquor they lived to consume. I had never let myself fully get into the thrill of intoxication but with the relief of forgetting Gerard came a new found love for the feeling.

 " _Stop the world 'cause I wanna get off with you_." James and I sang at the top of lungs, jumping all over Nathan's pristine cream coloured sofa. Everybody had long ago gotten past the point of caring about making a mess, the level of intoxication just getting too strong. I had been relatively calm as well, that was until James had put our favourite band on. Ever since Gerard had become embarrassed to listen to our childhood favourites, I'd felt a little lost with it all. Music had always made me feel so much better, and I knew it was even more so for him. So when he had neglected his passion in favour of rap music I thought was terrible, I couldn't help but feel a little rejected myself. I didn't care though, James still loved the Arctic Monkeys so yet again I was proven that I could survive without Gerard. 

" _With the exception of you I dislike everyone in the room_ " he sang again, looking deeply into my eyes and then whimsically smirking. 

"Do you mean that?" I toyed with him but could not remain serious and began laughing. It may have been fuelled by the copious amounts of alcohol that I had been drinking but I was actually beginning to laugh again, and this evening had resulted in my sides hurting from making up for lost humour. My thoughts were running wild again, but this time with the ethanol in my bloodstream which was a welcomed change from the anxiety I'd suffered from all week. Although we had started to drink all together in a circle, Harry and Matt had quickly got distracted by swapping Tinder accounts and Nathan and Kenny were lost in a conversation on whether or not the Labour Party were really that 'left' anymore, leaving me and James alone for the first time since Wednesday. Although I knew that I could fully trust him, it still made me nervous knowing that he was aware of my biggest secret and apparently had been for a while. The kind look on his face reminded me though that he was never going to judge me even though I had acted like a complete fool. 

"You know you're my favourite." He whispered causing a smile to spread across my cheeks. The lack of romance in my life meant that I was rarely anybodies favourite person. Gerard had always claimed me to be his but I'd stopped believing him a long time ago.

 "Oh, stop it!" I put on a voice that oozed fake modesty. I turned things into a joke because I had never quite mastered the task of accepting compliments. I didn't exactly lack confidence, I was sometimes too loud and would speak to anybody but I was becoming increasingly withdrawn by the day. I didn't know what happened to me but now, instead of leading the chants at our soccer games, I would slip quietly to the back and let somebody else take the limelight. It wasn't easy to disappear because I was the captain, but thanks to Kenny being the baby of the group, I could always turn the attention to picking him up in celebrations. I felt drunker than I ever had before so I was grateful for Nathan calling a phone ban because I wasn't quite sure I could have stopped myself from sending an abusive text. I knew that's not what I wanted, to truly learn not to care about him I at least had to act like it. The phone ban meant that I could not check his social media or obsess over if he was thinking of me by watching my own updates. In fact, it was nice to have a Friday night with my closest friends acting like normal teenagers for once. I'd lost track on how much we laughed and how many private jokes of those weird soccer tours that were brought up. I think for the first time in a while, I felt truly happy.

 

Not too long after 1 AM, Kenny had drank too much resulting in our evening coming to an abrupt end when he vomited all over Nathan's mother's expensive fur rug. It had made us all frantically clean and then collapse into the makeshift bedroom we'd created in the living room.

 

"Psst, Frank?" I heard James say from beside me. I had been lying awake, hand clasped on my chest, staring at the ceiling trying to get my head to stop spinning. I had sobered up a lot from earlier, I mean the rancid smell of Kenny's stomach bile had put me off consuming anymore drink, but I still was far from clear-headed. Although I had enjoyed the feeling of happiness from earlier, being so up for a while had only meant that I had fallen from a greater height. When I had been left with my own thoughts, I couldn't help from the toxicity from my unconscious mind seeping into the forefront of my fixations. As much as I ever hated to admit to myself, I'd spent a fair few nights trying to swallow the painful lump in my throat begging tears not to escape my eyes with the thought of him with somebody else. That's what I had felt like lying in Nathan's living room begging for my confiscated phone to buzz at least once, which was only made harder by the depressants I had greedily consumed in happier hours. I was not going to waste any more tears over Gerard though, he didn't deserve it. I was nearly a grown man, I was not going to cry like some little bitch over somebody who had not been the person I'd fallen in love with for many years now. It was a lot easier to fight back my emotions when the anger that still infiltrated through to my core was present when I thought of him trying to fuck up my soccer team. Toby had still not spoken to me, giving me a wide birth in the school corridors as I was an easier target to blame than the one who had actually done something wrong. Toby was a big guy, but he wasn't stupid. He did not want Gerard's older, thuggish friends following him home on a dark night, so despite his broken heart, he kept his mouth shut. The problem with that though is when you keep your broken heart bottled inside your chest, it manifests and festers until it slowly turns into a cancer that came consume you whole. I mean, I should know.

 

I swallowed hard, willing my voice to not come out shakily like I knew it was inevitably going to do.

"Yeah?" I finally replied to James who I had not actually realised had been awake too. I thought the sound of his soft breaths from the blow-up mattress next to my own was enough of a sign that I was alone with my thoughts. I obviously wasn't though. He inhaled deeply as if he was deliberating something big. Whatever it was, it couldn't have been as embarrassing as what I had confessed to him last weekend. 

"Can I ask you something?" Although the room was dark, I could tell from the sound of his voice that he was not his usual confident self. I didn't know why though, James was good at everything, everybody wanted to be like James including Gerard.

"Shoot," I whispered back into the darkness. "How did you know that you were gay?" He blurted out much to my surprise. It was like the question had been bubbling up inside of him before it came over spilling out of his mouth.

"James!" I hissed at him fearing the others had overheard even though the deep hum from Matt's snoring indicated that they most definitely were not listening.

 "They're asleep!" He protested, understanding my nonverbalised worries. 

"Well, what if they weren't? Plus, when did you come to the conclusion that I was gay?" I scowled at him although he could not see me. Just because I had been open to him with one thing in my life, did not mean I wanted an awkward talk about my sexuality when I did not understand it myself.

"Erm, when you told me that you were in love with a boy," He said as if it was obvious. If only it was that simple. 

"That doesn't mean I'm gay!" I blushed profusely to myself wishing that I had just pretended to be asleep. 

"Oh come on! It's not just Gerard is it? Because you always like to go on about Alex Turner don't you?" I couldn't believe he was using one of my band crushes against me as a valid argument.

"That doesn't mean anything! I think even Gerard, the straightest guy I know, finds Alex Turner hot." I scoffed, again, probably sounding like one of those overzealous indie girls from school that just came across as pretentious. 

"What, that same straight guy that kissed you last week?" He replied bluntly. 

"James, stop!" I groaned. The quick flashback to Gerard's lips on mine caused my stomach to flip with excitement which is not what I had wanted when I already felt sick from alcohol. To get rid of the seriousness of the conversation, I outstretched my leg and poked him with my toe causing him to giggle like a child. I could always get James to shut up by tickling him, he was worse than any child I had ever come across. My quick jab in his side had resulted in us play fighting until I had ended up underneath him begging for him to stop.

"James!" I squealed as he pinned my hands above my head with one hand and poked at my sides with the other causing me to thrash my limbs in desperation.

 "Will you two fucking faggots shut the fuck up? You've just woken me up." Matt groaned from the other side of the room throwing a pillow at us. It only caused us to laugh harder as he turned over, huffing out air harshly in annoyance.

"Well, that didn't take him long to fall back asleep did it?" James giggled at the sound of Matts snores filling the room once again. 

"Nope, he's tired out bless his little cotton socks" I mocked trying to muffle my sniggers with my pillow. "I've had a good time tonight, James," I added once the laughter had died down.

"Me too, Franks" he hummed happily "It's been a while since we've all been like that."

"Yeah, I know," I replied feeling guilty knowing it was mainly my fault that we hadn't been all together like this for a couple of weeks. I had been so selfishly wrapped up in my own head that I'd neglected those who cared about me the most. That was something to worry about in the morning though, as my eyes began to start getting heavy with the lack of sleep I had been getting recently "I am going to have to go to bed at some point or Grimshaw is going to slaughter us both."

"No, you're the captain he's going to slaughter you for getting half the team drunk this close to the finals," James replied in an amused tone at the wrath I was going to have to face tomorrow. Kenny could barely walk earlier, I didn't think he was going to make the best midfielder at 7 AM. "Fuck you, I'm taking you down with me!" I said, beginning to settle down into my makeshift bed and let the well-needed sleep finally take over. 

"Night Franks" he mumbled, doing the same.

"Night Jam," I replied using his on-field nickname feeling my mind become hazier by the second.

"Oh and Frank?" He added

"Mmm?" I barely managed to say

"Straight boys don't read secret Larry fanfictions do they?" I heard the smirk in his voice. I didn't know how the fuck he knew about those late nights I'd spent on One Direction forums reading over-dramatised romance stories willing them to be my life, but I guessed I had not been at good at hiding things as I once thought.


	9. 9) Whoever you're Mixing your Drinks with is Dying to get it out of you

** G POV- **

 

The toxic smoke from the cigarettes danced around the room making my vision hazy and my head spin. I was inhaling something much stronger though, trying to rid myself of the darkness that was coming. The world turns though, and just as quickly as the daylight comes, so does the night. Now the day was over and I was watching the twilight hour cloud my judgement, I could only dread to think of what was going to come after hours.  
"What are you doing, baby?" Jess asked, making sure to lean her body close to mine when she tried to see what I was looking at on my phone. Despite my blurred sight, I could only focus on one video on that stupid fucking thing. I tried to stay off social media when I was in a place like this, it never ended well. I watched the update from _his_ stupid friend Nathan of him rolling about on some sofa with James. That self-obsessed, arrogant fucking moron of all people had his hands all over _my_ best friend. James obviously would never admit it, but his crush on _MY_ best friend was undeniably obvious but Frank was too good for him. He was too good for everybody, that's why nobody had him. I didn't fucking care anyway I thought to myself as inhaled on my narcotics I couldn't even think of the name of. My phone got snatched out of my hands and I followed the illuminated screen upwards to see Joe's disapproving face looking down at me. He held it above me like I was a begging dog waiting for food, except that's what I was and I was going to beg.  
"Delo, give it back!" I snapped harshly trying to rip it from his hands before he saw what, or should I say who, I was looking at. He pulled it out of my grip once again shaking his head at me, a coy smirk spreading across his lips.  
"Joe!" I yelled using his first name, which he hated, to show I was serious. I squared my shoulders up to him and got in his face. We were both the same height so the rims of our caps were touching as I glared at him from under it. "Give it me back."  
He didn't respond for the longest time, just looked at me like the nobody that I was.  
"Boo!" He suddenly snapped, edging forwards slightly and making me flinch, causing him the amusement he'd been searching for. "You've got company G, don't be so rude" he tutted at me like a parent would do to a child before dropping my phone into his pocket and disappearing into the sea of bodies at this stupid party. 


	10. 10) The Boys Across the Platform Shouting Light-weight Prick

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "With a pat on my back and a swig of my brew, you're still my friend it's impossible to hate you."

**_\------------------_ **

**F POV-**

  
As soon as I opened my eyes, I regretted my new found rebellious life choices. I'd learnt that sickness caused by the love of Gerard was nearly beaten by nausea I had caused by the alcohol in my stomach. I had no idea how the hell he did this every single weekend without fail because I felt as if I had died and had been exhumed. Then again though, Gerard didn't have to wake up at 6:30 AM for football and have an overbearing coach taking it out on him.  
"Frank, get up." An equally exhausted sounding James managed to croak out and prod my side much to my annoyance. I was glad that he could not read my mind as the profanities going through it that I wished to direct at him definitely would have destroyed our friendship. "Frank! It's nearly 7!"  
"Fuck off," I grumbled trying to bury my head in the duvet. For that moment, the half deflated air bed on Nathan’s cold wooden floor could have been a bed of feathers and clouds with the way it enticed me in. I think for that second, if someone offered me the reciprocated love of Gerard or to stay in bed for an extra five minutes, it would have been a close one.  
"No! Grimshaw's going to kill you if you don't show up. Now, get your fucking kit on and brush your teeth you smell of a bar for fuck's sake."  
I did not like this new forceful James at all.  
———  
"Frank! Jesus, look where the ball is going!" Grimshaw yelled at me harshly. I barely had time to stutter out a 'huh' before the ball came colliding with my stomach causing me to drop to the floor and groan in pain and sickness.  
"Frank!" He snapped again. I'd been awake for less than an hour and I was already sick of hearing my own name with the number of people that seemed to be badgering me with it constantly. I didn't even attempt to get up, just rolled on the floor willing myself not to throw up. I thought that I was suffering until I looked at Kenny. The green tinge to his skin contrasted with the bright redness of his hair and freckles causing him to look like some kind of sickly alien.  
"Last time we do that on a Friday" he had groaned to me as Grimshaw had figured something was wrong and made him run a lap around the field.  
"Get up!" Grimshaw screamed at me one last time before I did what he said, but not in the way he wanted. I sprinted to the corner of the pitch as I felt the burning of the acid from my stomach creep up my oesophagus against my will. "Oh, for goodness sake!" He added as I finally gave in and threw up all of last nights regrets. 

 

"Come on, man." James tried to rub my back as I started dry heaving instead, probably sounding as if I was hacking up my own liver. "Ah shit, Frank erm just don't look up, yeah?"  
Despite James' warning, I did look up and instantly regretted it because there staggering through the park was Gerard, Joe, Jess and another girl that I did not know. After not seeing him all week, I had begun to think of him as some sort of illusion and honestly, I preferred it that way. He wasn't though, he was here and as lucid as ever. Unlike me and my friends, he had not attempted to sleep and had, in fact, clearly not been to bed at all which was made obvious by the red that surrounded his tired, drug-fuelled eyes and grey, lifeless complexion. I willed for him not to have noticed how pathetic I looked but there he was, staring at me blankly as if it was just me and him in the field. I wished my life would have been perfect. If it were, then Gerard would have seen me scoring a goal or running around happily not with vomit probably still dribbling from my mouth with James trying to comfort me as I tried not to die. If my life were perfect, he would have not been with my teammate's ex-girlfriend he had stolen, her high heels in one hand and the love of my life's hand in the other. From the way they were joined, it was clear where they were going and what they were going to do. I willed for Toby not to see because despite him acting like an utter idiot to me recently, he still did not deserve to feel his heart literally rip in two slowly like wet tissue paper like mine was doing. He quickly diverted his eyes away and back down to Jess and he walked past the pitch, keeping his head down acting as if the past seventeen years was a figment of my imagination.  
"Don't," I said to James "Just don't say anything." I slid down the fence resting my head in my hands trying to blink back any emotion that I was having. I was not one of those girls who followed him around, I was not going to shed any form of a tear over him.  
"I hope you feel big and clever," Grimshaw came bounding over once it had reached half time. "Getting my best players drunk this close to the finals! I bet this was _his_ doing, wasn't it? I've just seen him strut through the park with some cheap bimbo as if he owns the place. I've had to just sit and calm Toby down from going over and teaching him the lesson that quite frankly, I think he deserves!"  
Grimshaw obviously knew Gerard, he had been his coach for the brief time he had played with us and because of my father's friendship with him, he was often at my house. He had used to want to help Gerard when he was younger, feeling sorry for his lack of confidence but as he grew older and cockier, Grimshaw's sympathy had faded. Instead of feeling like he had to help Gerard, I think he felt he had to stop him from dragging me down the same self-destructive path.  
"It wasn't Gerard, coach." James said "Frank just has a sickness bug"  
I appreciated him trying to lie for me but the stench of my whiskey-scented breath clearly suggested otherwise. Also, vicariously it was Gerard's fault. If he had not completely blanked me out of his life as if I had never existed, then I would not have been driven to alcohol in the first place.  
"I'm not an idiot, James! I was seventeen once you know!" He tutted at us treating us like the idiots that we ultimately were "Look, as long as it stops at the drink as an occasional thing but the _SECOND_ I find out you have touched anything illegal you're not coming back to this team, Frank."  
I knew why he was harsher on me, I was the captain but also supposedly like the son he could never have due to his fertility issues so I did get it. That didn't mean I thought of it as fair in that very moment. All of my friends were struggling to keep their eyes open and play to their ultimate ability but somehow this was all my fault.  
"Fuck this." I pushed past him, something that I had never done before, and walked home begging the image of Gerard and Jess to get out of my head. I ignored everybody's pleas and instead jammed my headphones tightly in my ears and blared my music despite my blistering headache.

 

"Sweetie, are you home already?" My mother called from the kitchen getting mine and my fathers usual breakfast prepared for my usual later homecoming. Normally, the smell of bacon after soccer practice was enough to make my mouth water but today the stench churned my stomach into a knot.  
"Yeah," I mumbled, "I'm not well, I'm going to bed."  
With that, I ran upstairs before she should query as to why my eyes now had the same lifeless hue to them as Gerard's did. 


	11. 11) I can take this hit but I'm sorry I don't want the bruise

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "I never knew that a lie could sound so sweet until you opened your mouth and said that you loved me."

After eventually sleeping off the most severe hangover I think anybody had ever had, I managed to actually roll out of bed. I'd had enough of being so miserable, I felt as if it didn't suit me. That's why on Sunday when my friends had stopped by my house to check if I was okay, I suggested we went to the park and played a casual game of soccer to make up from the loss of practice I had been getting recently. 

"Kenny, over here!" I called at him as he kicked the ball to my feet and I purposely showboated it. I was finally getting my mojo back with it all, and I couldn't be gladder. It was nice to feel the fresh autumn breeze on my face, feeling the warm blush it left on my cheeks through stimulated blood flow just made me feel more normal. I knew that I was too heavily dependent on football, it couldn't love me or fix me like another person could but at the same time, it couldn't hurt me or desert me in my times of need. That's why I didn't even sit down for a break when all my friends had to, instead, I stayed on my feet aiming to keep the ball up for as long as I could. Despite the ever-plummeting temperature as the dusky sky began to set in for the night around us, I was sweating out the adrenaline that had been bubbling over at the seams. I didn't need alcohol or synthetic chemicals to fix my problems like others my age did, I could rid of my problems with every increased beat of my heart beat. 

"Playing football at your big age are we?" I heard an all too harrowing voice call over. I glanced up panting as I finally gave in and rested my foot on top of the ball to keep it still. For some reason, Joe was stood watching me as if I were some sort of freak show, Jesse and Ed not too far behind. 

"Give it a rest, Joe." I sighed in an almost defeated manner. I didn't feel like he had won, more that I had grown up and couldn't be bothered with his childish bullying anymore. I bent over and picked up my ball tucking it safely under my arm and attempting to walk away from the small mob that had gathered around me. James had instinctively come running over as soon as he'd seen Joe approach just like he always did. It wasn't a new concept for Joe and the others to be in this park, I mean it was the hub of where illegal activities in the city took place but I had never been without Gerard's protection before. Usually, Joe would give us shit and Gerard would stop it before he took it too far. That was Joe's problem, he just didn't know when to stop, and now was one of those times. 

"You're getting too brave, Frankie." He tutted at me in a patronising manner. He strutted over to where me and James were stood trying to busy ourselves in avoiding him and slapped the ball out of my hands. He'd already taken so much from me, that the ball was nothing, he could have it. He laughed at me harshly but I just sighed and rolled my eyes trying to get past where he and his two friends were stood.

"Don't be a dick, Joe" James said reaching to get the ball for me and keeping it far away from Joe who was threatening to steal it again. 

"Not puking today, Franks?" Joe ignored James and instead smirked in an almost evil manner at me thinking back to yesterday morning when I was a little bit worse for wear. I wasn't bothered what he said, I was more bothered that Gerard definitely knew that I had been sick and they had most definitely spoken and perhaps laughed about it. For some reason, I felt for the first time in my life that I was okay on my own. What exactly was he going to do? Get his older friends to beat me up maybe, but the problem was that is that I'd run out of shits to give. I'd been living with unbearable pain in my heart for years now, and no physical act of violence could ever compare to it. I didn't need Gerard's protection, I didn't need anybody.

"Oh, would you just get a fucking life, man?" I finally snapped and took the pent up anger that had been building up for four years out on him.

"Excuse me?" Joe asked in utter bemusement that someone as small as I had spoken to him such a manner. Instead of being threatening, I think I just entertained him but I just wanted to get through to his microscopic brain that maybe just maybe somebody was not scared of him.

"You heard me." I daringly took a step closer to Joe. My heart was hammering harshly, but it was more so through excitement. I wanted nothing more than to knock the smug smirk of his disgustingly average looking face. He had tormented people for too long and I was tired of waiting for someone else to give him the comeuppance he had coming to him, so I was going to take it into my own hands.

"You wanna go, man, we can go." He began to square me up, my half smirk not exactly helping his anger. Joe was taller than me, he was stronger and he had more experience but I had just given up caring. There could only be a positive out of this, either I would end up finally getting to give Joe Delo the right-hand hook he'd been asking for ever since we'd met or he'd end up giving me the physical pain that I was aching to feel to distract me from my emotional turmoil.

"Frank, stop!" James warned but I was too far in the moment. My eyes were glued to Joe's and his to mine and neither of us were going to back down. The contrast of his friend's encouragement to my friends protests just reinforced to me the truly toxic environment Gerard had been living in for so long and it didn't make me sad anymore, it made me fucking furious. The anger inside me had become so vile that it crept up my spine leaving my body cold and trembling. The venom that had taken hold of my mind had caused my body to act on impulse and resulted in me pushing Joe. I had taken the first move and I don't think he had quite expected me to, I wasn't exactly known for fighting. I was finally taking for my revenge for him murdering the boy that I loved, it was like some modern day Shakespeare or something. 

"Frank!" James attempted again but it was too late, Joe was already pushing me back. It appeared I was wrong, my hate for the guy had given me some sort of superhuman strength as I barely stumbled backwards when he tried to knock me to my feet. I felt the undeniable urge to punch him square in his stupid jaw, and I truly believed that I was going to until I heard a voice that made my blood run cold. The jolt to my heart caused by the once warm tones was enough to grind my actions to a halt and stare in disbelief.

"The fuck are you two dick heads doing?" Gerard came strolling over as if we were merely play fighting. He looked good. I hated myself for saying that but despite everything, he was still enough to nearly knock me off my feet, something that not even Joe's push could master. He was only wearing grey sweatpants and a plain long sleeved white t-shirt but he was better than I could ever dream to be. His eyes were stained a vicious red colour with the events of last night taking control of his face but he was still breathtakingly beautiful. Who the fuck had I been kidding by saying that I was over him? The way that my breath caught in my throat and my stomach turned in on itself told me that I was still scarily in love with him. Although we were not friends anymore, I couldn't help but feel the same echo of happiness to see him but I think that was just muscle memory. He came over and stood between us, forcing me and Joe backwards and away from each other.

"I don't know who he thinks he is recently, G, but you ought to get him under control before he gets hurt." Joe glared at Gerard who for once actually seemed awkward. I don't know why he had stopped him, surely he wanted Joe to put me in my place considering we weren't friends anymore. 

"Nah leave it, Delo. You promised me you wouldn't give him shit and I promised you I wouldn't tell everyone about-" 

"Shut the fuck up, Gerard" Joe warned but stayed silent at whatever the threat was Gerard was alluding to. I know he did not care about me so why was life so cruel as to keep suggesting he did? I was also a little angry, I did not need Gerard to protect me with threats to Joe or standing in the way of potential fights. 

"Well when you've stopped fucking about, Delo, Dean's over there with your bag and he's not gonna wait for you." Gerard rolled his eyes at Joe but at the same time reminded me I should not get ahead of myself. The Dean who he was referring to I knew to be their plug and I doubt that bag was full of anything legal or safe. 

"Exactly, so get me away from these utter wasters" Joe shook off our confrontation and pushed past me with force. I didn't exactly win our scuffle, but I felt as if I had because I had never seen him walk away before. I thought that I was happy with that, right up until I felt Gerard's firm hand on my shoulder and an undeniable smirk on his face. He leant forward subtly, causing my heart to beat faster with the memory of when he had pressed his lips to mine and whispered gently in my ear.

"That's my boy" he chuckled and walked away, leaving me staring at the path of destruction he had just left.


	12. 12) Come pick me up, take me out, fuck me up

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "Try it for sleeping sometimes, maybe you'll rest sometimes"

All I could hear was the constant hammering of the hands of my clock reminding me of the sleep I was not getting. I think the constant ticking would have been enough to make me lose my mind if it weren't for the plaguing thought racing around my head.

That's my boy.

What was that even supposed to mean? I didn't think he wanted anything to do with me, let alone think of me as his boy.

I couldn't quite comprehend what he meant but James sure tried. He had been obsessed with the idea that Gerard was trying to worm his way back into my life and did not give up debating the matter the whole walk home despite my silence. He had insisted on walking me home but I think that was just to check that I wasn't going to follow Gerard to the other side of the field where they had all been huddled around the beaten up old Toyota trying to subtly swap wads of cash for bags of chemicals. I wanted nothing more than to do that but if the past week had taught me anything, it was that I should not get ahead of myself. He did not want me, and that was just the reality of it. The feeling that his lips had left on my own was slowly fading into a lost memory and I think that was maybe for the better.

_~~~~_

_He leaned into me and moaned in my ear, crying out my name in fits of passion. He tried to smash his lips on to mine in the process but he had missed and instead just lost himself in the skin on my neck. He bit down, whimpering my name, begging for something that I was going to most definitely give him._

_"Please," he begged me, "please."_

_the sunlight was seeping through the cracks in the blinds making his eyes light up, framing his gaze perfectly. His long eyelashes tickled my cheek as he sucked down hard on the delicate skin below my ear. I didn't verbalise a response, it wasn't physically possible, I just instead gave in to his begging body._

_~~~~_

Fuck. I didn't even realise that I had flitted into an unsteady sleep but it appeared my unconscious mind had been running wild. I tried not to think of him like that. Think of him when he was weak or think of him crying out my name but sometimes I just couldn't help it. I'd woke up gasping, still feeling the phantom touch of his kiss pressed below my ear. I gingerly touched the skin, apprehensively liking the tenderness that the dream had left there. It was insane, the skin there was virgin, but it didn't feel like it. The careful graze of my fingertips caused my whole body shiver as I trailed my touch down my cheek and made delicate circles on my stomach. My body was screaming at me to give in, my thighs burning with lust for him. I could make it all go away with just a few simple touches, my hand was only a short distance from my crotch that was giving me obvious signs. I bit my lip hard, trying to get the images of him so weak and begging out of my mind but it was just making it worse. It only reminded me of the way he'd nibbled my lip in real life when he had been begging to kiss me deeper.

I rolled over and buried my head deep in my pillow trying to rid myself of the flush on my skin and the tingling sensation in the very pit of my stomach. I wasn't going to jack off to the thought of my best friend, that wasn't progressive.

I didn't know how long I'd spent with my face smothered deeply in my pillow but I was only dragged away from it from the vibrating of my phone. For the past week, I'd become conditioned to instantly check my phone every time it gave me the noise of a notification and despite my persistence for independence, I was yet to extinguished the habit.

**\- U awake?**

The text simply said but it was enough to make me throw my phone across the room with shock. Gerard had text me for the first time in a week and a half. I knew that I sounded melodramatic, but for someone who you spoke to every single day to ignore you for that long felt like an absolute lifetime, especially when that person was someone that you loved. I forced myself to take deep breaths before apprehensively going over to where the phone lay discarded on the floor and read the text message again to ensure that I had not been making it up. It was there though, the blue speech bubble with the white simple text was undeniable. The time was past one, which made a smile spread across my lips as it was late and he was thinking of me. He thought of me enough to message at this hour, despite the threat of school being only a few hours away.

**\- Yes.**

I finally managed to reply, ignoring my own rational pleas to ignore him as he had ignored me. I couldn't do that though and we both knew that. Me and Gerard were not the same in that way and I would always fall sucker to his cries.

——

I sat eagerly awaiting the loud echoing of the sub-bass infiltrating my room from his parked car until it finally arrived. I was still wearing my blue plaid pyjamas pants with his black North Face hoodie pulled on top, not wanting to look as if I'd made any effort. This was not our first late night drive and I never usually dressed up for the occasion so I thought tonight should be no different. I had tried and mostly succeeded to ignore Gerard's forgotten favourite hoodie thrown over my desk chair but the temptation had gotten too strong. It was not out of character for me to wear his hoodies, he knew I liked mine to be a little bigger and for the most part, I was too lazy to get out a clean one from the ironing basket but he did not know the intentions behind why I wore them. I did not want to wash this hoodie with my mothers own washing powder because I did not want to rid it of the scent of him. I pulled the hood tightly over my head and breathed the smell of it in one last time before slipping on my trainers and sneaking out the door. I should have not have been nervous to see my childhood best friend, but I was. Over the past week, he had become like a stranger to me and I begged for that person to not be in the car.

His sleek, freshly washed car was parked outside of my path and I saw the hunched over shadow inside only illuminated from the light of his phone screen. He had his favourite navy Ralph Lauren baseball cap pulled tightly over his head but like me, he was wearing his pyjamas which indicated to me that my best friend was back. I knew that I should have been stronger, I should have at least tried to resist his temptation but it was futile. I was so in love with him, I would follow him until the end of the earth.

"Hey, bug," He smiled warmly up at me as the noise from the car door opening alerted to him that I was there. The coldness in the core of my heart instantly melted away with the warmness of his voice. "Long time no speak!"

I instantly felt my cheeks flush red with embarrassment as if he could somehow know the debate that had been running through my mind only half an hour earlier. I was grateful in a way that I had not given in to the temptation and thought of him whilst I released my body but then again, it was making it harder to drag my eyes away from his slightly parted lips as the tension in me had not been yet released.

"Hi, G." I managed to squeak out.

"Everything okay, Franks?" He frowned, placing a concerned, yet innocent hand on my thigh at my new found apprehensiveness. Although the act was platonic, I willed my mind on to any thought that would take my mind off the sound of his escaped whimpers that he had made last week when he had been kissing me.

"I thought you hated me" I mumbled into the darkness of the car, finally admitting my insecurities aloud.

"What? Frankie, you could shoot me and I still would never hate you. You're my best friend why would you say that?" He asked in genuine bewilderment as if he hadn't ignored me for the past week and a half.

"You ignored me," I confided "I mean you didn't show up at school and you didn't tell me to come around on Friday and you didn't reply to my text-" I began to get worked up into a small frenzy before he stopped me by squeezing the hand he had on my thigh tightly.

"I have some explaining to do," he admitted, guilt spreading across his face "let's drive for a bit I'll get you a coffee and I'll explain."

Being in his car in that very moment was more dangerous than anything I had ever encountered before and I would have rather of stood my chance with a pack of wolves.

He didn't immediately begin to explain himself, instead, he sped off into the night blasting our favourite singer, Frank Turner. It had been a while since we had sung in the car together, especially to music like this. It had been a little awkward at first but with his persistent encouragement, it wasn't long before I was singing along with him at the top my lungs going a little too quickly but not particularly caring for once.

"This song man, it always reminds me of you" He grinned to himself before turning ' _The Way I Tend to Be_ ' up even louder than the stereo previously was. I didn't have to bring up the memory that flickered into my thoughts because I knew that he was thinking of exactly the same one. We had gone to see Frank Turner together at this small underground run down club, and despite the mass of people there eager to sing their hearts out, me and Gerard had reserved a spot on the barrier. There was only enough room for one of us so he had let me stand in front of him as he wrapped his arms around me and rested his hands on the metal fence in front of us. Despite the fact that the real-life Frank Turner was stood only metres in front of me, I could only pay attention to one thing and that was the feeling of Gerard's warm body that engulfed me and filled me with the purest form of happiness I had ever felt. I didn't seem to care that the original artist was singing his heart out on the stage just above my head, all I cared about was Gerard's gentle singing voice right in my ear leaving goosebumps on my tingling skin. That night had been one of the best to dates because our evening had not ended there. I had been tired from queuing up all day and wanted to go home but Gerard had other plans and I was glad that he had.

*****

_"Come on, G, I need to sleep!" I begged him pulling on his hand as the mass of crowd dispersed around us. I had been having the time of my life at this gig but once Frank Turner had retreated backstage, my tiredness had resumed and I was eager to go back to his and crash._

_"I need a cig, Frank" he whined and his persistence had eventually paid off as I gave him and followed him down some dark alley so he could have a cigarette away from the screaming fangirls outside of the front of the venue._

_"You owe me big time." I rolled my eyes at Gerard's new nicotine habit. Although it had been warm earlier, the temperature had dropped resulting in me shivering whilst Gerard inhaled the dangerous habit._

_"Anything you want, bug." He smiled around the cigarette, reeling me in like a fish caught on bait._

_"Mate, can I ask you a favour?" A strong southern British accent came from behind Gerard as I looked up in complete awe to where the actual Frank Turner was stood "Can I steal a cig?"_

_"Yeah, sure," Gerard said nonchalantly as if our idol was not just stood next to us casually asking for a cigarette. I had never been more grateful for Gerard's disgusting nicotine habit. I was completely star struck, barely stuttering out replies to his questions about the gig whilst himself and Gerard went into a deep conversation about whether the Smiths should still be idolised despite Morrissey's ever-growing toxicity._

_"It's been nice chatting to you both." Frank Turner said as he got called back by one of his entourage._

_"Wait erm," Gerard said quickly "Can we get a photo please?"_

_I knew that he really was not bothered about a photo because, despite his beauty, he hated being in them. I knew that he had done that for me by the way he smiled at me discreetly as Frank Turner threw his arm around his both as the guy who had called him back inside took a photo with Gerard's phone._

_"Thanks!" I managed to stutter out, still completely in awe that my musical hero was talking to us as if I was any way shape or form on his level._

_"Here, take this as a thank you for the cig" he nodded as he pressed something small into Gerard's hand before walking back towards the chipped red door behind us._

_"No fucking way, G!" I cried in excitement, jumping all over him and smothering him in my affections "no fucking way!"_

_"Aye, who's glad for my smoking now?" He raised an eyebrow at me but hugged me back in the process._

_"Me! Smoke all you want!" I continued to jump about._

_"My little pocket rocket" he smirked ruffling my hair "anyway, I said I owed you one so here."_

_He pressed something into my palm and waited eagerly for me to see what it was. When I opened my hand, it was the very same guitar pic that Frank Turner had ended his show with._

_"I can't take this!" I stated in disbelief. Gerard loved Frank Turner and he had given it to him, I was not going to take it._

_"Nah bug, I love you and I'm not taking it back." He grinned pushing my hand away that was trying to give him the pic back._

_"I love you G, I love you I love you I love you!" I almost yelled at him, nearly knocking us both to our asses as I continued to jump all over him._

******

"Yeah, can I get an iced latte please?" Gerard said to the speaker outside of McDonald's. I had been so caught up in listening to his melodic voice that I hadn't even fully realised that we had made it to the drive-thru. The fact that he didn't even have to ask for my order spread a warm feeling throughout my chest and I felt genuinely happy for the first time since he'd last been kind to me. The feeling was like when you were in excruciating pain and suddenly it just stops and utter tranquil peace bathes every inch of what was hurting. It was dangerous to have your happiness be that solely dependent on somebody, especially someone as self-destructive as Gerard, but I just couldn't help myself.

"Thanks, man," I said breathing in the sweet scent of the coffee he had just brought me eagerly taking a sip to fight off any tiredness that was threatening to ruin our night.

"That's okay, hey! Nice hoodie." He smirked at me pulling at one of the hoodie strings causing me to blush.

"It's mine now," I joked "shouldn't have left it at mine now should you?"

"It looks better on you anyway" He added but did not give me chance to bathe in the compliment before speeding off back onto the motorway.

We had been silent for what had felt like an eternity but in actual fact had only been perhaps a minute. I sipped my coffee quickly to act as if I was simply occupied and definitely not in a state of confusion of what to say to someone that you were in love with and until recently resented. That was this thing with Gerard though, an hour ago I think I would have wished some sort of suffering on him to make my own seem less detrimental but all I wanted now was his happiness, even if it meant sacrificing my own.

He instinctively drove to the same spot he always did, a quiet secluded car park that looked over a big reservoir of water. It was pitch blackness, the only light was coming from the LED screen of his car but it was enough for me to see the features of his face. It had begun to rain quite hard despite the neutral weather we had seen earlier, almost as if the storm threatening in the night sky was representative of something that was about to happen. For a moment, we both looked over the water at the full moon just listening to the hammering of the rain bouncing off the metal car frame. I appreciated the almost silence for a second, taking my time to gather my thoughts. I felt as if I had been catapulted into a completely new environment as I had spent all day hating a monster I had created in my head that was far away from the innocent boy sat next to me chewing nervously on the skin surrounding his thumbnail.

"I started drawing again." He finally said filling the air with his emotionally heavy voice. I glanced over to him as a blush spread across his cheeks as if he'd admitted to something he should not have been doing. I couldn't quite believe what I was hearing, however, because not all that long ago the little art freak I had once loved had thrown out all of his supplies stating he was over that bullshit. I hated him for it, he'd gotten rid of almost all of his work despite most of it being better than I could ever dream of producing. He was so good at drawing that he used to obsessively do it, I could never quite understand how he didn't get bored because the only time he did not have a pencil in his hand was when he was sleeping. His hands had permanently been stained a metallic lead colour with a matching smudge across his cheeks which Joe and his friends had washed away with the constant snide remarks. They never encouraged his talents, between art and music they called him a faggot until he buried those hobbies and became a nobody. He had always suffered from his mental health but at least he used to have outlets to rid of some of the demons but nowadays the only thing he had to shut those evil voices up were those fucking drugs he religiously consumed every weekend.

"You erm drew?" I dumbly repeated at him.

"Yeah, like I dunno I just sat down and I drew and I fucking liked it, Frankie. I mean how sad am I?" He laughed to himself, Joe's beliefs so ingrained in his mind he truly believed his old love for art was ridiculous.

"No!" I said quickly "I like you when you draw, I think you're amazing at it."

"You have to say that," he rolled his eyes at me, but still avoided my gaze "you're my best friend."

"Am I?" I dared to ask. Despite the rain, the air was crystal clear meaning my words could not be lost and I had nobody to hide behind.

"Why would you say that?" He frowned at me, finally snapping his neck around to stare intently into my eyes. If it were not for the caffeine giving me a slight buzz, I think I would have been lost in a daydream.

"Because I dunno you were acting weird" I shrugged not quite being able to admit to him how I truly felt.

He inhaled deeply.

"I need a fucking cigarette." He stated clearly before leaning over me and scrambling in his glove box for his car stash of smokes. I had not felt his body this close to mine since he had kissed me and had resulted in me breathing in sharply to avoid my mind from wandering back to the dream I had earlier in the night. His eyes lit up as he saw the pack of red Marlboros he kept only for his most darkest of nights because of their strength. He usually preferred to smoke his amber leaf roll-ups as they were weak enough for him to get a nicotine hit but also did not mean his head became fuzzy with the toxins but when he felt like shit, he almost needed it. He'd told me before he liked cigarettes to regulate his breathing and when he needed it, make his thoughts spin away from anything toxic.

"I didn't mean to treat you like shit," he said a little more nasally than usual as he held the smoke in his lungs for longer than he should "you're just the only person that I care about so I take shit out on you." He let go off the smoke causing it to infiltrate the car. Instead of holding my breath like I usually did, I greedily gulped in the tainted air to try and get some second-hand nicotine high to calm down.

"Why did you feel like shit?" I asked him, begging him to not bring up the kiss. I felt bad enough about it already, I didn't want to know that it had mentally destroyed him in any way.

"I dunno, I think I was just being pathetic again" he shrugged.

"Hey!" I snapped at him "You are not pathetic! You have depression G, it's hardly your fault."

He chuckled a little under his breath causing me to look at him in a confused manner because I didn't think depression was exactly humorous.

"What?" I asked.

"I'm just not used to people saying that to me. Delo- I mean Joe always just tells me to get the fuck over shit yano? It's weird that someone actually knows that I'm a head case."

"Fuck Joe Delo!" I scowled at him feeling the same anger from earlier seep through my veins and flood out of my mouth "You are not a head case."

"You always make me feel normal. How do you do that, Franks?" He grinned at me flicking the half-smoked cigarette out the window.

"Why'd you do that?" I asked in confusion. Gerard was well off financially but he still needed to wait until one of his older friends were available to go to the shop for him to get him those stupid smokes so it wasn't like him to waste them so flippantly.

"I just don't need it when I'm with you" He shrugged as if he had not just made my heart grind to a complete halt with the compliment.

He went on to explain to me that he had been in a really dark headspace and he had lied to his mother about feeling ill so he could concentrate on getting better instead of his school work. He had always had the advantage of being naturally intelligent so missing a week of school was not necessarily a big deal for him. He then told me that he'd gotten so fucked up over the past week that he stomach felt as if it was raw from the number of toxins he had hurled up and I called him an idiot. He'd also told me that he'd wanted to call me on Friday but he was in that mindset where he did not want to burden me, of course, I told him that was never the case. He went on to say that on Friday, he had been so drunk that he could not even stand to smell cheap paint stripper vodka ever again. When I glared at him for his stupid mistakes, he only reminded me of my own.

"You can't talk, I saw you vomming at soccer." He chuckled at me, causing me to blush at the pathetic memory.

"I'm never doing that again, I slept for like 17 hours" I shuddered thinking back to the memory of my weekend spent in bed, the ghost of nausea still fluttering inside my stomach. "How do you do that every weekend?"

"That's why you snort coke, takes the hangover away because it makes you come down when you're too high." He again shrugged at me as if what he had said was nothing.

"I'm not doing coke."

"And I would never let you touch the stuff. You're too good for coke Bug, you're too good for everything in this shitty world"

"Why do you think I am so innocent?" I protested wanting him to see me as something other than a pathetic loser.

"Because you're good Frankie. Your insides are pure and good meaning that you come across like that but me, I'm fucking rotten like an old apple and I just end up hurting you and I'm sorry."

"Shut up G!"

"No."

"Yes!"

"Make me" he threatened. I wanted to lean over and shut his stupid mouth up with my lips covering his own but of course, I couldn't do that. Instead, I jabbed the side of his ribs harshly with my finger causing him to yelp and curl into a ball. "Stop!" He giggled trying to get away from me.

"Well stop chatting shit then!"

"Okay! Okay! I give in!" He squealed as I pinned his arms above his head and threatened to tickle him even more. He could act like a big man in front of his friends, but I knew how to get him to retreat back to being that chubby dork more than Joe could ever dream of knowing.

When things had calmed down a little, I realised I felt completely normal around him again. Well, as normal as I could be considering I had a sex dream about him only an hour earlier. I dared to bring up the question that was plaguing my mind, ignoring the fact I might not have wanted to know the answer.

"Can I ask you something, G?" I dared to question him.

"Go for it, bug."

"Why did you fuck Toby's girlfriend, Don't laugh man you've made it fucking shitty for me at practice he blames me for some reason!" I whined at a giggling Gerard. Although it hurt that he had confirmed that he and Jess and hooked up, from a friendship perspective it was also nice for him to actually be honest with me again.

"I'm laughing because it's funny, Frankie doodle" He continued to laugh at my suffering causing me to get increasingly annoyed at him.

"How is it funny to steal the love of someone's life? I mean Toby isn't a bag guy-"

"The same Toby that called me fat ass up until I was friends with Joe, yeah?" He raised an eyebrow at me causing me to stop. I had selfishly completely buried the memory of Toby giving Gerard relentless shit at school for being slightly over-weight even though it had probably added to his obsessive weight complex. I felt guilty because, at that time, I had not been captain and had no power to get him to stop. I was a shit friend to Gerard, no wonder he had been so close to being done with me.

"Fair enough," I simply shrugged "he probably deserved it then didn't he?"

"Yeah, I've been waiting fucking years to get him back for the time he cornered me when you weren't around."

"Huh?" I asked in genuine confusion.

"Ah I didn't tell you because I knew you'd blame yourself but he followed me home once when I missed the bus and he was just giving me the usual shit but it went a bit further and he started pushing me around." He almost shuddered at the traumatic memory and suddenly I did not blame him for acting the way he did. I think if I got the chance to get some form of revenge on Joe, I would instantly take it. I'd always thought people who wished the best on their enemies were morally stronger than I but also delusional. I didn't want Joe to succeed and I couldn't sit and watch it happen and be happy for the guy, I wanted him to suffer the same way he'd caused others to suffer.

"G! You should have said I could've got him off the team or spoke to him or anything!" I argued suddenly furious he had not let me defend the innocent kid who had probably cowered in fear away from Toby and his meathead friends.

"Nah, I dealt with it in other ways like fucking the love of his life which can I just say she begged to be with me I barely even looked at her!" He rolled his eyes as if he couldn't see why she wanted him so badly. If me and Jess could agree on anything, it was that if it were socially acceptable, I would also have begged him to be with me too. "Look, Bug, I never meant to drag you into this shit that's why I never told you all of those years ago and I know it's not an excuse but I was steaming and she was there and I'm sorry but I wasn't thinking of how it could fuck up your life."

"It's okay, G." I nodded at him. The car was silent for a second before the echoing sound of thunder filled it.

"Fucking sick!" Gerard said in excitement running out of the car to the passenger side and trying to drag me out of the car into the torrential downpour outside.

"G, what the fuck are you doing?" I whined as I started to get soaked from the infiltrating rain from him dragging on my sleeve.

"I'm still emo at heart Franks, I still love a good rainstorm" He leant over me in the car to turn up the music and then backed away and started to headbang in the rain and play some incredibly inaccurate air guitar. " _and in the rain, I'll scream your name,_ " he sang loudly.

For a moment, I just smiled at him, appreciating my best friend in his utter state of completion.

"Fuck it," I said to myself and got out the car and jumped on him, pushing him about like we were in our own private mosh pit in a thunderstorm.

"Frank," he giggled as I pushed him a little too hard and he stumbled backwards into a particularly big puddle. He grabbed onto me and pulled me with him but did not let go, instead, he clutched my waist and looked down into my eyes. There was a fat raindrop dribbling from his slightly overgrown fringe under his cap that I ached to rid of with my thumb as it fell down on to his lip but I couldn't bring myself to do it. Instead, I splayed my hands on his chest, completely frozen with the look he was giving me. Like before, his gaze flickered down to my lips and then back to my eyes, making my head spin at a million miles an hour.

"You're the only thing in this decrepit shit hole world that I care about" He admitted as a flash of lightning went off far away in the distance making us both jump. Before I could respond, he flashed me a half smile "Jheeze, when did I get so cringey? You're going to start thinking I'm gay soon." He shook his head, laughed, and dropped his hands from my waist. Fuck.

Once we had gotten back into his car, I began shivering with the soddenness of my pyjamas so he turned on the heating but even when I warmed, I could not stop trembling. His words raced around my mind, he was not gay and he did not love me in that way. He'd made that pretty clear with his words. So, why did his actions speak so differently to me?

"I'm sweating my balls of man, how are you still cold?" He asked me as we approached the street that my house was on.

"Because some idiot dragged me out in the rain." I rolled my eyes at him. If I had gotten good at anything in the past seventeen years, it was pretending that his words didn't hurt me.

"Ah, you still love me though!"

If only he knew the truth to his words.

When he parked up, just past my driveway in his usual spot, he got out of the car much to my surprise.

"What are you doing?" I queried as I got out too.

"I don't want to be by myself," he said in such a small voice, I barely heard him. It had been a while since he'd asked to sleep over, but I knew that's what he meant. There had been a time that we slept at each other's houses practically every night, his mom didn't particularly mind because she knew it dragged him out of that dark place. I was also so accustomed to his house, as Gerard was to mine, that I could let myself in or sit with his parents without him being there without it being awkward in the slightest.

"Fucks sake," I over-exaggerated my complaint, obviously not minding "let me get you some dry pyjamas."

As I tucked him into my bed on his side, he snuggled happily into the giant bear he'd brought me years ago. I smiled to myself, thinking what Joe would say if he could see his friend like this, I don't think he would have been best pleased.

"Stop laughing at me and get in!" He protested at my giggles "I need your body heat to warm my feet up."

I did as he asked and slipped next to him into bed and squealed when he put his cold feet on me, making me thankful for my loft conversion of a bedroom as my parents weren't likely to wake. It was 4 AM, and I could not be bothered to explain to my mom why there were soaked clothes on the floor and why Gerard was in my bed. We had always shared a bed unless he had a girl over, it had always been that way and Gerard hadn't changed it even when his friends relentlessly mocked him for it.

"Night Franks," He hummed happily shuffling over and resting his tired head on my shoulder, something he did not do often but when he did I embraced every second of it.

"Night, G," I whispered into the darkness tracing small circles on his shoulder where my arm was to keep him in place. Out of pure nervousness, I didn't dare move. I didn't want him to move his body away from mine so instead, I stayed incredibly still until sleep finally took over an hour later.


	13. 13) What Keeps me Alive is the Green in her Eyes

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The next chapter is going to be longer and focus on Gerard's history a little more hence why this one is a bit shorter. I hope that is okay :)

I awoke feeling groggy at the lack of sleep I'd had the night before but appreciated it because it reminded me that last night was real and he had been here. I stretched out my limbs, enjoying the crack of my tired bones but feeling disappointed when there was just the imprint of his body next to mine. As I came to my senses, I panicked a little looking around the room but seeing no signs of him. I couldn't believe he had left me already, I'd never felt so fucking stupid in my life. I moved a little too quickly to look out the window only to be flooded with relief when I saw his rain-soaked car still parked in its usual spot. 

"Frankie! Get down here." My mother interrupted my daydream by calling my name in an unusual sing-song voice for a Monday morning. 

"Yeah, Frank!" I heard Gerard's husky sleep-filled voice float up the stairs waking me more than the scent of coffee ever could. It was considerably embarrassing at how fast I found myself running down the two sets of stairs to where Gerard and my mother were sat on the kitchen island both eating toast.

 "I made you your latte, bug." Gerard motioned to the steaming cup of coffee in my special mug shaped like a football. He didn't have to ask if I wanted breakfast or not because he just knew my routine of not feeling hungry until 11 o'clock and then becoming completely ravenous. He proved this further by tossing me the packet of crisps that I would devour on our mid-morning break at school. 

"Thanks," I sat down apprehensively next to him. It was as if last week hadn't even happened, the way he was sat giggling with my mother over both of our father's drunken poker nights 

"How come you're awake?" I frowned at him. Monday mornings were not a Gerard thing and he'd been ecstatic when he'd found out he didn't have to be in school until 11 with his timetable this year, so I was a little bewildered at the fact he was actually awake so early.

"You wriggle in your sleep." He scrunched his nose up at me and then stuck out his tongue. 

"Fuck off" I mouthed but could not fight the smile spreading across my face. Gerard always complained that my incessant movement in my sleep kept him awake, but it was never enough to stop him from slipping under the duvet next to me. 

"Frank!" My mother snapped without any real threat, it appeared it was not just me who was a sucker for Gerard's charm. My parents adored Gerard, anything he did, they would praise which is probably why I kept his illegal habits such a secret from them. With them loving Gerard so much, it made it even easier to escape to the world in my head where he was pure and everything that I dreamed of him. I couldn't remember the last time I had spent my morning laughing around the kitchen table at breakfast, especially on a weekday but it set me up for the whole day. It felt good to be like me again, no worrying or destructive cognitions holding me back. 

"Right, get dressed Franks, I'll take you to school and May, you get off to work tell my mom I'll be home after school." Gerard nodded and began gathering the plates and rinsing them down in the sink ready for the dishwasher.

"You're my saving grace, G." My mother smiled at him as if he was an angel. The way the few streams of morning sunlight illuminated him through the kitchen window, I didn't think he was far off from being something holy. 

"Are you not out with Joe tonight?" I raised an eyebrow at Gerard once we had gotten into his car. He'd decided to just come into school with me which meant he was wearing my jumper that was too small for him. He should have looked ridiculous but the way the cotton clung to his now taut muscles made me stare with my mouth open for a little too long. 

"Nah, I need a break my nose is stinging like a bitch" he responded insinuating to the snorting of drugs that he had been relentlessly doing over the past week. 

"Gross." I scowled at him, not being able to hide my disapproval any longer. 

"Sorry _Talk to Frank_ ," He rolled his eyes at me. He always called me to talk to Frank when I judged his narcotic habits referring to the drug campaign from years ago, not giving in with the joke despite the lack of laughter from myself. 

"Can I ask you something?" I queried trying to break the slight tension that had formed between us.

 "Yeah, bug." He nodded turning down the stereo to hear me clearly.

"You know when you saw me in the park, what did you threaten Joe with to keep him so quiet?"

"Ah," He smiled "I'm not really supposed to say." I knew that he was toying with me and that he was going to give into my best puppy dog eyes but I still hated that he made me work for the gossip that was going to cheer me up.

"Tell me!" I begged turning to him, resting my cheek on my shoulder trying to entice him into my innocence.

"Don't look at me like that! I'm keeping my eyes on the road away from your hypnotic eyes, dude."

"Hypnotic eyes? Sorry, _Derren Brown_." I smirked, not letting him dominate the conversation like he wanted to.

"You know that I'm a sucker for your eyes, bug." He sighed as if his own irises weren't the colour of a shining gemstone themselves.

 "Shut up," I blushed 

"Fine. Anyway, why were you fighting with Delo anyway?"

"Did he not say?" I raised an eyebrow not believing that Joe had kept his mouth shut on our debacle from the day before. 

"Well yeah, he called you a short little jumped up cunt that started on him for no reason, but I know that's not you Franks," he chuckled and added "I mean you are short and you can sometimes be a dick but I know you don't start fights for no reason."

"Hey!" I protested "and he came over giving us shit."

"But he always gives you shit, why did you retaliate?"

"Because I was in a bad mood anyway and he was in my way." I crossed my arms in a huff, avoiding telling him that he was the reason why I was in a foul mood that day.

"Fairs" he nodded.

"You tell me now then, what did he do that made him shut up?" I asked eagerly, wanting nothing more to hear Joe's humiliation. I may have been verging on adulthood, but I was still petty enough to enjoy the downfall of my worse enemy. 

"He cried a couple of weeks ago, his ex Alex was at that rave we went to getting off with some guy that Joe tried to punch but ended up getting knocked to his feet by him. Hey! Frank, it's not funny that's the only girl he's ever loved, man!" He argued at my laughter but could not deny his own smile spreading across his face with the memory of Joe meeting his match. I'd never met Joe's ex-girlfriend Alex but I was glad she existed. She was his first everything and he had been obsessed with her up until he'd cheated for the last time and she'd gotten bored of waiting for him to change. Joe Delo was like a dog who had not been trained well as a puppy, too eager and misbehaved too much and then acted confused when people got bored of the destruction he left. 

I walked into the green iron gates of my school completely lost in a state of delirious happiness. Gerard was by my side, not caring that his friends were going to inevitably give him shit for being with me later. I was totally lost in the words he was saying. He was only speaking about his preference for the biological approach to psychology over any behavioural methods but the way he strung his words together were like silk that I wanted to wrap myself up in forever. It was only James' glare from our table as we walked into the hall that snatched me from my contentment. I saw his mind race to conclusions as he furiously stared at Gerard, who was giving him a matching stand-off gaze. 

"Oh, here we fucking go." Gerard snapped back into his ass hole persona and barged past me to his own table where Ross and Tom were waiting for him. I knew that it wasn't James' fault, he and Gerard hated each other and the last time we had spoken he thought that I had despised him too, but I couldn't help but blame him. If he had not approached us in such a judgemental way, then the old Gerard would still be clinging on to my side.


	14. 14) Cigarettes over coffee, Halo slipped to a noose

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sorry if this chapter is a bit long! There are mild references to depression and anxiety as well as a very small reference alluding to a minor eating disorder just in case you want to skip that bit. 
> 
> Also, I feel like the second verse of this song perfectly describes everything that happened to him in case anybody wants to listen and get emotional like I do lol 
> 
> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qcguxHc4hiU

** G POV- **

****

The way James looked at me as if I was Satan himself caused me to tremble with anger that same way it had all those years ago. Everybody thought of him as some sort of hero, a soccer star, an academic genius and a morally good person, but I saw through the facade. I saw the way he ogled my best friend, the way he acted as if I was not good enough to even know him and most importantly the way he wanted to take him away from everything that he did not approve of. Everyone had always compared the two of us, but most thought of me as like some evil twin version of him. People thought that he treated girls with respect, but I knew from the way he acted as if he owned my best friend, it probably was not females who captivated his attention.  
I wished I could be like James, but our environments had created two polar opposites. James,  would never see the same streets that I did in the decrepit light, he did not automatically assume people spoke to laugh at him and he did not have a fiery passion of hatred for himself at the very core of his soul. My anger towards the world that had made this way was under my skin like a deadly infection and if it did not end up killing me, it was going to spread and slaughter all those around me.  
“Sup, G?” Tom asked, his voice hazy and thick with a high from his Monday morning marijuana binge. “Why were you with that loser again?”  
“My mom said I needed to hang out with him,” I lied “but that obsessive prick is dragging him away again,” I added, referring to the way that James had his arm thrown loosely around the back of Frank’s chair keeping his eyes glued onto him like a cautious parent would do to their toddler at a park.  
“I don’t know why you let it bother you so much” Ross shook his head at me as if my hatred for James was utterly futile.  
“Shut up, Ross.” I snapped harshly, attempting to pull the already too small jumper sleeves over my hand to cover the way they were trembling.

 

** —- 3 years ago —- **

“Not joining in, G?” Franks mother, May, came and sat next to me on a matching black barstool looking out at the garden. I had been attempting to draw my art homework for the past hour but there was just something incredibly unfulfilling about drawing ripe fruit when all you felt was rotten inside. I had been anticipating this day for years now, Frank had always been so much better at social interactions than me and I had selfishly been holding him back ever since we’d started school. If it were not for me, I knew that he would have been the most popular person in that shit hole because he was everything that everybody wanted to be. I lay awake at night, crying into my pillow that I was not like him. Next, to Frank, I felt even uglier, even fatter and even more pathetic. The pain from my toxic mind did not sting like a fresh cut anymore, more like an uncomfortable numbness that made my body live on autopilot. I often felt that my mind and my body were separate things as I always felt awkward in my own skin. It was like my soul was allergic to my frame, constantly leaving an uncomfortable itch reminding me the two things should not be connected.

 I knew that today was not going to be one of my best from the moment I woke up. The sun was shining for a start, and I knew when it was warm everybody else was happier only emphasising my own emptiness more. It was also a Thursday which meant that Frank was not going to be around at lunchtime as his stupid soccer club was having their extra practice session on the school fields, something that a fat mistake like me was not welcome to join. I could have gone to watch him, but it would have only left me more aware of the extra weight I was carrying compared to the boys I idolised from the team. I hadn’t even hated soccer when I had played it. Sure, I was not obsessed with the game like Frank but it sometimes had felt good to feel the breeze ruffle my hair and distract me from my irrational mental torment for once. It was just that when I ran, I was alerted to all of the other guys laughing at the way my skin did not stay taut like there's when I moved and the way I got left behind when we had to run laps, despite my best efforts to keep up.

 I was always going to be left behind though, and I knew that I had been lapped once again when Frank had come running over to me with a popular boy from our grade, James, after school. People like me did not associate with boys like James, everybody liked him for a start. To James, I was invisible and I was pretty happy with that right up until he seemed to attach himself to my lifeline.

 Apparently, they had gotten to speaking when they had been paired together in the warm-up and they had just instantly clicked. Of course, they fucking did, they were the teams two best players, their friendship was unavoidable. I tried to share the excitement that Frank had for his new friend, but I could not seem to achieve the matching glint in my eye. I knew that it was selfish, but I didn’t want to share Frank. Talking to new people made me nervous and retreat even further into myself but I was tired of holding him back. I loved him too much to ignore the fact I was damaging him by clinging to his side every day.

“Nah,” I finally managed to mumble out to May who was offering out one of my favourite cookies she only ever got in the house for me. I took one gratefully and stuffed it in my face, trying to fill the ever-growing emptiness in my core. I knew to binge was not the answer, but the brief relief that food brought me distracted me from my darker coping mechanisms so I didn’t think that one cookie would hurt.

“How come, sweetie?” She pressed, recognising that it was not like me to be sitting down in the kitchen instead of following Frank around like the lost puppy that I was. I think May herself had been a little taken back when her son brought home a new friend with him tonight because it had always been just the two of us but she, like everybody else, had fallen victim to James’ charms and was more than happy to oblige to Frank’s demands of setting another place at the table for him.

“I- erh I don’t play soccer.” I sighed deeply regretting my decision to give the sport up. If I had not given those freezing early mornings up at the park, then maybe the distance between us both wouldn’t have been as big as it now was. I gazed out of the big window in their kitchen watching Frank run around happily, the ball remaining glued to his feet. His cheeks had a pink hue to them, and his hypnotic smile was spread across his face making it impossible for me to stop him. There was no way on Earth that I would ever want to rid him of that stupid yet mesmeric grin. He and James ran at the same pace, passing the ball between the two of them, shouting in euphoric glee. Frank did not need a friend like me, an art obsessed weirdo who only held him back, he needed friends like James who could keep up with him.

 “Frankie,” his mother called in her cheery voice into the garden “why don’t you come in for a bit, you boys have got to be thirsty by now!”

 I get she was trying to help me, but I could think of nothing worse than having to be the third wheel between Frank and James. They were aching to discuss the future of some footballer I had never heard of at some club I was unfamiliar with but Frank would never do that with me here. Like his mother, he always tried to include me in things even when it was not what I wanted. We didn’t have to awkwardly force out a conversation on The Smiths when I knew that James thought the lyrics were weird, I wouldn’t have minded just slipping into the background.  
  
“I am thirsty,” Frank shrugged running back into the kitchen “hey, G, whatcha drawing?” He peered curiously at my blank sheet of paper. I wish he didn’t pretend to care about my art, it only created a false hope that our friendship would stand the test of time when I knew in my heart that it probably wouldn’t. His immediate connection with James was just the start of our downfall, and I loved him too much to stand in his way any longer.

“Nothing,” I grabbed my sketchbook protectively away from James’ inquisitive eyes not wanting him to realise I had just been staring at Frank for the past hour, not drawing. Frank shrugged and turned to his mother accepting the tall glasses of ice water she was offering around.  
  
“Hey Frank, tell your mom about that goal you scored at lunch today!” James said, his voice coated with giddiness with the memory of their dinner time win. I don’t think he realised he had done it, but James had stood in front of my chair cutting me out the small social circle that had formed in the kitchen. It didn’t matter anyway, I couldn’t understand the tactical jargon they were using with my limited knowledge of the sport.

After Frank and James had greedily gulped down the water, they had been quick to sprint back outside to resume their game of kicking the ball back and forth, A game that I was not invited to play. I suddenly wanted nothing more than to be alone and to be solely comforted by the droning sound of my solum records

“Hey, May,” I said to her as she busied herself at the stove.

“Yeah, babe?” She spun around as I hurried to gather my things back into my rucksack.

“I’m not feeling too good, I’m going to go home I think,” I said, not exactly lying I mean I didn’t feel great just not in the way she probably thought I meant.

“Oh no!” She rushed over, fussing to feel my temperature like the second mother she was to me “I can drive you home if you’d like, or you could always go for a lie-down!”

“It’s okay thank you, I just think I need the walk home.” I pursed my lips together as she seemed to silently understand my pleas to leave. She never verbalised her concerns, but I knew it would be a topic of conversation between her and my mother at work tomorrow.  
I left Frank’s house without saying goodbye to him or James, I’d had enough of being a burden on him for one day.  
  


** —————-  A few months later -----------  **

Frank and James’ friendship had blossomed into something someone like me could only envy from the sidelines. Things in his life were just coming together, he’d finally gotten the friendship group he’d always dreamt of and he was constantly snowed under with social plans that he tried his best to include me with but with no success. I loved Frank, I really did, but he was ignorant to the fact that I was a misshaped puzzle piece and no matter how hard he tried to jam me into place, I was not going to fit.

My loneliness had only grown like the distance between us. He liked to spend his lunch breaks playing soccer with his new found friends, not cooped up on the benches with me hiding from the harsh rays of the sun. I’d begun to spend my time in the art rooms, pathetically preferring the teacher's company to the harsh taunts that were awaiting me outside of the field that weren't so easy to take on my own. I’d finally found a place in this shitty school where I did not have to hide behind a stupid mask and it felt fucking good. It was exhausting to pretend to be happy, especially when everyone was aware of the fact that I was a loner.

Fridays were always my favourite days of the week. It was the only real life I got to see Frank without his new friends but also I had my favourite art lesson before our lunch break which meant I had two solid hours to work on the new scene I was painting. I’d called it Akrasia, a word I’d felt instantly drawn to when I’d heard what it had meant. I always tried to visualise words that attracted me, and with this one, I’d try to capture the fact I liked to stay trapped inside my own mind, despite knowing it was not a healthy way of living. I needed to increase my optimism, but that was difficult considering I just didn’t really see the point.

 “ _Errr_   Sir, you’ve got a bogey.” The class clown, Joe giggled furiously at his own immature comment. He knew what to do to get under people's skin and infuriate them until they’d snap, including my favourite teacher, Mr Charles. Joe had spent the past hour making stupid comments to Mr Charles slowly winding him up like a jack in the box, edging him on to snap. Joe was extremely popular, nobody crossed him despite his constant irritating digs he mainly made because he knew that he would always get away with them. I often observed him like the weirdo I was, I couldn’t help it, I was just fascinated. He was like a zoo animal to me, his life so different from my own that I couldn’t help but watch. For the most part, Joe left me alone. He wasn’t particularly kind to people, but I think he knew that I had enough torment from the others in the class so apart from the occasional fag comment, I was most excused from his wrath.

 “Joe, I have a class full of 12 year-olds after lunch I do not need any more immature grief from you!” Mr Charles snapped at Joe, looking tired with having to maturely retaliate.

“So guys, I want you to draw the fruit in the bowls in front of you.” Mr Charles finally finished his instructions once he had given Joe a final warning. I hated drawing fruit, it was always drawing fucking apples nowadays. The perks, however, of one of your main friends being the head of the art department though is that he often did not make me do the mundane tasks and I was mostly left alone to my own devices.

“Can I have a grape, sir? I’m _so_ hungry!” Joe called out, grabbing his skinny stomach for emphasis making everybody in the class laugh apart from me. I just wanted this demonstration to be over with so we could all get back to our own work and away from the awkward atmosphere Joe was causing. He appeared to be even more insistent on causing havoc today, obviously bored because his best friend Ed was off school ill. Of course, Joe had other friends, he was the most popular guy in school but without Ed here to bounce off, Mr Charles appeared to be his new victim.

“No! Under no circumstances are you to eat the art props any of you!” Mr Charles sighed in defeat, rubbing his temples to try and rid himself from the apparent migraine that was forming.

“No danger of Gerard eating that fruit, it’s not from McDonald’s is it?” Toby, a boy who insisted on making my life a misery, chirped up from the back of the class. I hated Toby, he always found a way to comment about my weight that I was already well aware of. Frank had asked him to back off many times, trying to use his football team bond to his advantage but Toby just got smarter and made comments when my best friend was not around to protect me. I’d learnt a long time ago to stop telling Frank about the snide remarks his soccer friends made to me because it was embarrassing when he felt the need to defend me. It didn’t stop them trying to make me feel bad, it just made them laugh that I needed my shorter, skinnier friend to stick up for me.

My cheeks burned hot with Toby’s sly comment as I felt the whole classes eye revert to me trying to hide their sniggers behind their sleeves.

“Toby!” Mr Charles snarled at the stupid football jock. I knew he felt more defensive to me than the other teachers did, but it was the same with Frank, it was just embarrassing relying on somebody like that to defend you. Mr Charles was about to speak again until to my surprise Joe spoke instead.

“Aw Tobes, I’d rather be a little over-weight than have a small dick. Before you even say that you don’t, everybody saw it in the changing rooms, man, so I suggest you shut the fuck up!”  
We all stared in disbelief, Joe did not stick up for anybody that was not in his squad, let alone for a nobody like me. I blinked at him, as did Toby lost in the harshness of his insult.

“Shut up, Delo.” It was now Toby’s turn to profusely blush as the class could no longer contain their laughter, even me.

“Boys! Calm down!” Mr Charles said but turned away to hide his own smirk, attempting to remain professional. He’d told me before that I reminded him of the young boy he used to be years ago, so I think that despite his hate for Joe, he was going to let the comment slide for his own childhood trauma more than anything.

“But sir-“

“I said calm down Toby!” Mr Charles snapped and set the class off on drawing their stupid fruit pieces.

I spent the next 45 minutes completely lost in admiration for the boy I had thought of to be an idiot. He obviously still sat far away from me but the small nod he gave me when he went back to his seat indicated to me that maybe I had got Joe Delo completely wrong.

Mr Charles’ slight lenience towards Joe did not exactly last long because when he poured a staining red paint all over the desktops it appeared to be the final straw.  
“ **RAH**!” Joe yelled loudly as he squirted the expensive acrylic paint at his pretty friend Rosie causing her to squeal. For some strange reason, he seemed to get joy out of the destruction he was causing and smeared the paint all over the desk causing his section of the art room to resemble a murder scene. Himself and Rosie were now play fighting, smearing stains on each other's cheeks, both giggling furiously. I wished I could have spoken to a girl like Rosie like that, but she would never look at a fat ass like me. She was a petite, popular girl who everybody desired the affections of. Saying that though, no girl ever looked at me. Girls spoke to me to ask me about my good looking, athletic best friend who was just too blind to notice he was everything that they wanted. Of course, I was jealous, he never seemed grateful for the female attention even when that pretty girl had kissed him last summer in Italy. 

“JOE!” Mr Charles snapped making even me, on the other side of the room, jump with the sternest of his tone. “This is unacceptable!”

Instead of responding, Joe only mimicked our teacher's expression in a way a child would do.  
“If you think this is so funny Mr Delo, then you can stay behind and clean up your mess and see if you still find it hilarious.”

No. That was definitely not what I fucking wanted. The art rooms at lunchtime were mine, I was left alone just how I fucking liked it. I didn’t care that I had momentarily thought Joe maybe not be that bad, that did not mean I wanted to share my escape mechanism with him. It was futile though, Mr Charles knew the only way to stop Joe pushing the boundaries was to take away his social opportunities that were going to come at lunchtime.

“Right, Joe,” Mr Charles sighed after giving Joe the worse telling off that I had ever seen him give to anybody “I need to go and speak to your form tutor about your behaviour but I must warn you it will not be worth your while to push your luck anymore!”

“Yeah, yeah!” Joe rolled his eyes at our teacher as if he thought he was being punished for no reason. Mr Charles hadn’t seemed to care that I was in the room when he shouted at Joe, I was always there like part of the fucking furniture or an old miserable ghost not being able to leave. Instead, I was left alone, much to my own delight.

“And get cleaning my tables!” Mr Charles called out before leaving the two of us alone. I retreated into myself further to avoid his eyes which I knew were burning into my skin. It appeared that Joe could not even go 5 seconds without being mentally stimulated through the company of others.

“ _Geeeerard!_ ” He called as if he was trying to recall a dog to his heel. “Yoo-hoo!”  
I tried my best to ignore him, but he was frantically waving his hands in front of my face meaning that I could no longer pretend that he didn’t exist.

“Mmm?” I mumbled, not dragging my eyes away from my nearly finished work.

“Whatcha doing?” He bounded over, forcing my protective arms away from my sketchbook to see my work. I never let anybody but Frank and Mr Charles see what I was working on mainly because I didn’t know how to explain the dark imagery, but it appeared Joe was giving me no choice.

“Hey, give it back!” I cried frantically as his judgemental eyes flickered over my spilt heart on the charcoal covered page.

“Woah, that’s fucking cool kinda I mean, it is, but what is it?” He stuttered out in confusion at the drawing on the page. It was clear that I had drawn a depiction of a brain that had dark creatures seeping out of the crack contrasting to the cheery imagery that I had painted in the background. “Akrasia, what the fuck does that mean?” He asked raising an eyebrow at the title I had written at the top of the page. It baffled me a little, how Joe had not attached himself enough to the word to remember its meaning as we had both been in the same philosophy class where I had initially heard it. It just proved how different we truly were.

“Akrasia is like where you make bad decisions despite knowing there’s a better choice that you could make, as in the philosophy behind your free will.” I blushed feeling embarrassed that I had just said that to him.

“Ah cool, like how despite my fucking hot girlfriend Alex, I still wanna fuck someone else yeah?” He nodded as if he thought he’d just stumbled across the meaning to his life. I found it strange how one could talk so nonchalantly about sex, I mean he was only 14 for goodness sake. I wasn’t sure if he was a virgin or not but I knew that he was far more developed than I was.

“Yeah, I guess,” I mumbled finally being able to snatch my work back from him which he had quickly lost interest in.

“That’s just between me and you though right, Gez?” He smirked using the unusual nickname that nobody had ever called me before.

“Yeah,” I confirmed that I was most definitely not going to tell anyone what he’d just said, well maybe Frank later but, he wasn’t just anybody.

“I mean you gotta understand like Rosie was just blatantly coming on to me, right?” He seemed proud of himself for attracting a girl like Rosie, I mean I couldn’t blame him, she was beautiful. I was just also confused because although I had never met his girlfriend Alex as she went to a different school, she was also incredibly stunning from the photos I had seen so I couldn’t understand how he could so flippantly cheat on her.

“Yeah, totally,” I confirmed his suspicions, much to his delight. Joe always liked it when people conformed to the standards he set, and most people were only too happy to oblige.

“You can’t blame me though can you, man?” He took my slight responses as an invitation to sit at my table, something no one had ever done before.

“Nah, she’s pretty,” I nodded attempting to get back to my drawing that I was running out of lunch break to finish. I blushed at verbalising my attraction to that girl, I mean I knew she’d just end up disgusted if she ever found out.

“What?” Joe stared at me in confusion causing me to look up at him and finally put my pencil down for the first time since I’d sat down. “I just thought you were gay, I mean you’re always jumping over that soccer kid and- “

“I’m not gay, he’s just my best friend. Well, I mean, I think he still is…” I sighed thinking of Frank running around on the field with his new friends, leaving me locked away like fucking Rapunzel. I also internally cringed at the fact that people had taken my affections for Frank to mean something else, fuck, what if he thought that? No wonder he had been distant recently he was probably creeped out at the thought of me crushing on him. I mean I knew sometimes I might have stood a little too close to him or breathed his scent in for a little too long but I think I was just lonely. Nobody apart from my mother ever took the time to hug or talk to me so I clung on to Frank’s affections and the way the sent a warm feeling throughout my whole body.  
“Well shit! That’s a relief then I was worried you were going to start trying to suck my dick or something,” He chuckled to himself as if his homophobic joke was amusing. I didn’t find it funny, but I still forced a laugh.

“Nah, I’m more of a Rosie fan than a Joe one,” I dared to smirk back, actually causing a laugh out of him. “Erm, Joe?” I finally added being cautious of the clock that was about to strike half past, the time that Mr Charles religious returned and ate his usual cheese sandwich.

“Yeah?”

“Mr Charles is gonna be back in like 5 minutes and he’s going to go insane if that table isn’t clean.”

“How the fuck am I supposed to clean the table! Do I look like I clean tables? For fuck's sake, he’s going to give me a detention tonight and me and the boys were going to this party with Rosie and the other girls!” He whined as his thoughts flickered through the fun events he was going to be missing.

“Here, I’ll help you.” I shot to my shaky feet and pushed past him to the deep red stained desk that he’d been sat at earlier. By helping him, I essentially scrubbed at the thing frantically on my own until the shade finally began to lift and the dull wood began to show once again. Joe sat there whilst I worked, his feet hooked on the desk as he leant back in a chair watching me cover up his mistakes. Dick.

“Wow, Joe,” Mr Charles burst in the room only seconds after I had finished scrubbing for him “I must say I was not expecting you to actually work so quickly and efficiently.” He nodded completely flabbergasted at the sparkling table that was in front of him, despite Joe’s relaxed stance. Instead, it was me who was red and flustered from cleaning, and I had gone back to hiding on my own desk not being able to fully concentrate on my drawing.

“Ah! You need more faith in me, sir” Joe responded whimsically, making Mr Charles instantly forgive him. Joe could be an idiot, but could also be so charming that he could make an idiot like me do his dirty work for him with his mind games.

“I apparently do! Right, off you go and enjoy the rest of your lunch!” Mr Charles waved him away causing him to eagerly grab his belongings and go running towards the door to where his friends were waiting.

“You coming, Gerard?” I heard him call as he reached the door, making me and Mr Charles’ heads snap up with the unlikely comment.

“M-me?” I stuttered as Joe looked around the room comically because I was obviously the only 14-year-old with a name like fucking Gerard.

“Yeah, come on art boy get your bag and get out of this room for once.” He sighed, running back over to where I was sat and pulling on the sleeve to my blazer.

 

 

**———-**

****“Boys, this is my new friend, Gerard.” Joe dragged me to where his terrifying friends were sat around on the field sharing a cigarette far away from the patrolling teachers. “Play nice.”

“Sound.” The tall one I knew as Jesse to respond as if Joe hadn’t just brought the biggest dork at school to sit with them. 

“Come on Ross, move the fuck up so Gerard can sit down!” Joe went over and pushed one of his friends, much to his annoyance.

“But Delo-“ they guy protested.

“But nothing! Fucking move it cob head.” Joe replied bluntly, leaving no room for Ross to respond. “So boys,” he continued “Gerard is going to be coming to Tom’s shindig tonight and we’ve got a mission on our hands.”

“What?” I squeaked out, internally dying at how awkward I was coming across.

“You said you liked Rosie, so let’s go get you hooked up with a Rosie.”

“But she’s not going to like me I’m fat and a dork!” I panicked not meaning to make a joke but slightly enjoying the way the squad laughed at me, even if it was at my own expense. 

“Have some faith Gdizzle,” Tom nodded at me “Delo is the best wingman.”

“You betcha!” Joe placed a strong hand on my shoulder, causing excitement to flood through my veins and breathe life in me for the first time in a while. 

“Joe, it’s not like you to let Rosie go, man. I thought she was off limits?” Jesse raised an eyebrow at his friend and me who apparently was his new project.

“Yeah she was, but Gerard this is my welcoming gift to you!” Joe replied.

“Welcoming to what?” I frowned in confusion.

“The squad you idiot!” He grinned at me, flashing his crooked teeth. “Anyway, Ross give me those biscuits you’re eating I’m fucking ravenous.” He snatched Ross’ packet of biscuits away from him, even though he was in the middle of eating them. “You want one, Gerard?” 

“No thanks,” I mumbled, shocked at my own response. I had never been strong enough to resist my favourite foods before because sometimes they were the only thing that comforted me, but I suddenly felt as if I didn’t need them anymore. I was sick to death of seeing the fat, disgusting embarrassment staring back at me in the mirror, and today was the first day of the rest of my life.

Everyone seemed happy at me joining in and laughing with my new friends, something that I thought that I’d never say. Well at least I thought everybody was happy, but the glaring, big hazel eyes from the soccer field burning a hole in my skin suggested otherwise.  
  


**————-**

“Frankie,” I began as we climbed on the bus home that night, not giving him a chance to ask why he’d seen me with Joe and his squad earlier “I need to go a little earlier tonight.”

“Why?” He frowned with attitude. He seemed pissed at me for some reason but I didn’t see why. He was always the one trying to force me to be sociable, and now that I finally was, he didn’t seem content with it.

“Because Joe’s going to come by and take me to Tom’s -“ I stopped what I was saying with the scowl that formed across his beautiful face, like some kind of thunderstorm. The events of the day had left a slight sunburn on his nose and his hair slightly ruffled making him look more flustered than usual but it was still enough for me to get lost in him. My admiration for Frank, I knew, was beginning to become too dependent. He should have been happy that I was finally going to distance myself from him, hopefully, it was going to stop the tightness in my chest that was beginning to form every time he got a little too close. I didn’t understand my own brain, so I’d stop trying to comprehend my weird cognitions a long time ago. 

“G, you’re too good for those wasters. If you want to do something then come to practice tomorrow! The boys all miss you and-“

“I don’t like soccer, Frank.” I sighed, getting bored with reminding him that I just didn’t fit in with his friends. I knew he had been lying to make me feel better, none of his friends missed the way I weirdly clung to Frank’s side like a toddler. “And Joe isn’t all that bad…”  
  
  
****

 

** ———— 6 months later ———— **

“Just like snort it, G,” Joe said wrapping his arm around my shoulder as I stared apprehensively at the white powder his older friend had just produced. I wasn’t an idiot, I knew that Delo had been dabbling in narcotics for a while now and one by one, our friends were joining him. I had been the last one to resist, fearing that if anybody found out then my mother would lose her high up law job and I would destroy my family. Joe was not close to his own mom though so did not exactly possess the empathy to understand my hesitations. “It keeps your appetite away, yano?”

Fuck. He always knew how to win me over. It had taken hard work and many dreaded gym trips but I was finally gaining the muscle I’d so badly wanted to have when I was younger. Just because I’d lost weight did not mean that I saw myself as anything but that fat loser still. Also, repressing my appetite hadn’t really gotten any easier, especially when people like Frank were constantly trying to force me to eat my old favourite foods. Maybe a little help wouldn’t be so bad after all. 

“R-really?” I stuttered out, internally cursing at my awkwardness in front of Dean, Joe’s older, scary friend. 

“Yeah, ain’t that right Deano?” Joe looked to the older man as he nodded at me. Dean shoved the rolled up note in my hand and made an imitating sniffing noise, and I could no longer find it in me to refuse.

I leant down to the rickety old table in Joe’s living room before shoving the rolled up note in my nostril and inhaling the substance on that had been laid out. I blinked back furiously trying not to gag at the way it stuck to my uvula leaving a horrid burning sensation in its place. 

“And now we wait, G,” Joe confirmed at the anti-climatic start to my new apparent drug-fuelled lifestyle.

Slowly, the burning sensation started to fade and instead everything around me started to become more… neutral. It was like for the first time in my life, I did not feel hatred towards the world around me and the adrenaline that once plagued my anxieties was now working in my favour to create a euphoric feeling. Without realising what I was doing, I reached my own hand in front of my face and watched it move at an almost snail pace hypnotically. It was like my mind and body were now separate things and I was finally reaching the state of disconnect I had been craving for years now.

How could I ever have been so apprehensive about something so fucking brilliant?

 

 

** \---- A year later ------**

“Fuck you, Gerard!” Rosie screamed in my face after catching me kissing her best friend Molly for the second time. I mean, how could she blame me? We’d been on and off for a year now and I was getting tired of her constant attitude problem and the way Joe always claimed I was whipped to her. It wasn’t my fault I didn’t love her, I didn’t know what love was. I thought after we’d hooked up for the first time, these feelings that I’d been anticipating for years now would come flooding to me but I think I was just too damaged. I mean, I liked the attention and I definitely liked the sex but I just wasn’t a fan of what came after. Rosie had constantly been trying to kiss and cuddle me and I was over it, it made me feel uncomfortable and trapped and I needed a way out. That way was through her best friend who had been coming on to me for weeks who I had finally given in to and had been secretly hooking up with for weeks. I liked the danger that came with getting caught though, so maybe it hadn’t been an accident that I’d decided to publicly make out with Molly on the bench we met up on despite knowing it was on Rosie’s way home from dance practice. That hadn’t been enough though, so I’d taken it one step further and kissed Molly at Joe’s party to only drive a wedge in their friendship further. It was like a game to me and if they were stupid enough to get played, well that was on them. That’s what Joe told me anyway. 

“I gave you everything!” She screeched at me, only causing me to cockily grin at her instead. “And fuck you too, Mol! You know how I feel about him!”

“But you knew I liked him and you still fucked him!” Molly yelled back at her now former best friend, leaving me observing their argument like the sadistic fuck that I was. 

“Thatta boy, G!” Joe came overthrowing his arm around my shoulder “Now, just to sort your shit haircut out and get that body count up and you’ve made it.” He said proudly ruffling my overgrown mop on my head. He was right, the outdated emo haircut was getting a little tiresome plus, my devotion to Rosie over the past year had meant that even Ross had slept with more girls than I had, but that was going to change.

 

** ——- Back to the scene in the first chapter but from Gerard’s point of view ------ **

Frank was beginning to annoy me. He couldn’t just fucking sit there and wait for his Rose fucking Dawson to come out of the blue, he needed to learn that real love didn’t exist as I had a long time ago. He didn’t understand the release that hooking up gave to me, all he cared about was his stupid soccer. 

I’d watched him for the longest time on our usual Friday night hang-out feeling frustrated. It wasn’t exactly his fault, it was just the way he kept getting lost in his thoughts despite me telling him my most shocking stories solely to grab his attention. He wouldn’t give it to me though, which only made me want it more. It was the way he let a gentle sigh escape his pursed lips that had become slightly reddened by the way he was gnawing anxiously on them. It just made my skin hot and drew my attention to the way my tie was wrapped too tightly around my neck. I thought I was long overdue a hook up as for the past few days I could not rid myself of the eagerness of my body. It wasn’t like I was walking around permanently turned on or anything, it was more that there was something in my brain screaming to escape causing the very pit of my stomach to burn slightly, that I couldn’t quite put my finger on. When we were younger, Frank was always the one with more ADHD tendencies than I had, constantly wanting to run around and not feeling content sitting still unless there was deafening music blaring in his ears. It seemed to have changed now because he seemed okay with daydreaming his life away and I just couldn’t seem to leave him to it. Once again, I’d brought up his virginity, a concept that I was becoming increasingly obsessed with every day. I just couldn’t understand how someone who looked like he did and was as a likeable as he was was still an un-kissed virgin. It wasn’t even as if girls had not tried to capture him for months now, but every person who asked, he shot down. He was more beautiful and confident than I ever could be, so how did I have the upper hand?

“I mean I’d fucking show you if I could.” I mentally slapped myself for offering such a thing. I didn’t even mean to, it had just been something that had been on my mind for a while. I thought maybe if I, who he was fully comfortable with, showed him then maybe I would snap him out of this delusional state he always seemed to be in nowadays. He stayed silent for a moment, only alerting me to the blush spreading across my cheeks as I mentally kicked myself for letting my word thoughts escape me. I had thought about kissing him a lot, not that I meant to. It didn’t mean anything, I think that because he was the only person I cared about, sometimes I got confused. It didn’t matter though, because I stopped those intrusive images before they could fully take control.

I was even more shocked when he’d agreed. I’d never felt nervous to kiss anybody before, not even Rosie that first time all those years ago. Frank was not just anybody though, he was everything to me. I knew I didn’t treat him well sometimes but it was like he got caught up in the collateral damage in the destruction of myself. He had James though to give him normality and as much as I hated the guy, he’d saved him from ending up as a head case like me. I’d gradually stopped talking about my mental health so much, not wanting to burden him as he always felt obliged to fix it. You couldn’t just fix a screw up like me though, Joe had taught me that a long time ago. 

 

I had taken the time to kiss Frank delicately on the cheek to try and compose my shaking body enough to not screw this up. It was too late to go back on my offer so I was going to go through with it, I just needed a minute. I’d finally managed to pluck up the courage to do it though, and with the feeling of his soft virgin lips on my own, let out that thing screaming in my head. I didn’t mean for it to go further than a peck but fuck, the warmness of him was like a fire I couldn’t help getting closer to with the attempts to defrost my icy soul.

** ———————- Back to the present ------------- **

I bit down hard on the skin surrounding my thumb to try and drag my mind away from the way he had been whimpering from under me. If anybody found it out, we’d both be destroyed. That’s why I’d tried my best to stay away from him. The thing was though, that like I’d previously stated, he was a fire and it just so happened that the temperature around me was getting colder everyday leaving me aching to be warmed. 


	15. I need somebody to hurt, just to know how it feels

>  

**F POV-**

James wasn’t talking to me. Gerard wasn’t talking to me.

 

The lack of communication was just leaving an empty silence echoing around in my head reminding me of how lonely I was. I didn’t understand what had even fucking happened because, in the space of 3 days, my life had once again crumbled. Every time I dragged myself the fuck back to my tired feet, there was always someone there waiting to knock me over again.

James was off with me because he said he felt I only used him when Gerard wasn’t around which was complete and utter bollocks for a start. I knew it must have been frustrating for him that one minute I hated Gerard and the next I loved him but he was the one who had forced me to open up in the first place. I had been content keeping my love for the guy a complete secret, like I always had done. Then with Gerard, he’d refused to even look at me even in the lessons we sat next to each other in. Every time I begged a conversation out of him, I was lucky if he even replied with a hum because most of the time he failed to acknowledge me at all. Ever since he’d made that comment about James staring at him, it was like he blamed me for everything. It wasn’t fucking fair. I tried my best to split my time evenly between my two closest friends but it just wasn’t enough for them. I was sick and I was exhausted of trying to keep them both happy, when was it my turn to be cared about?

“Frank!” Grimshaw yelled as I booted the ball hard at Toby, obviously on purpose. I’d just had enough of him treating me like dirt especially since Gerard had reminded me of how much of a dick he had been to him in the past.

“You wanna fucking fight, Iero?” Toby snapped after he had gotten over the initial winding I had caused him.

“Hey! You are a team, start acting like it!” Grimshaw saved me from replying, blowing his whistle furiously at the altercation that was going to take place. I didn’t think that I actually wanted to fight Toby, I just think the testosterone that was building up inside of me was begging to release itself. All I could do was sit and tremble as I thought about everything that had happened, so no wonder I got ahead of myself when I had been given the chance.

“Is everything okay, Frank?” Coach Grimshaw came over to me as I was changing my boots back to my trainers after practice. It was unlike me to be on my own once we’d finished a game because I usually wanted to stop and gossip with my friends, but they’d all awkwardly followed James when I told them to leave me alone. I was stupid really, all I complained about was being lonely but it seemed their company wasn’t enough. Nobodies presence was fucking enough for me anymore, nobodies but Gerard’s.

“I’m fine!” I argued wanting him to leave me alone. The last time I’d confided in somebody, it had left me burnt and I was not going to make that mistake twice. I couldn’t rely on other people, the only person that could save me was myself. Inside, I didn’t feel the same optimism that I had felt the Friday before, I just felt defeated. I needed to retract myself from everything and everyone around me to allow myself to heal without anybody else's influence. I was a sunflower that needed to grow in my own direction, find my own sun, without the guard of anything artificial. I didn’t want a fake love, I wanted somebody to fucking care about me. I wanted somebody to lie awake thinking about me and go insane at the thought of me kissing them.

I wanted somebody to hurt, just like he had hurt me.

 

——

 

Things still hadn’t changed by Friday. I sat at our table at lunch with my friends, but it was fucking awkward. No one knew what to say to me, because I just ended up snapping at them, so no one bothered. I was only so on edge because I’d have another awful hour of psychology after lunch, and I’d seen Gerard, and he was not happy. Ever since James had caused it there, he had a permanent scowl etched on his once delicate face. Despite his foul mood, he’d spent his lunch with yet another girl sat on his knee, as if we were at a club and not in school. Although I’d tried my best not to, I couldn’t help but stare at him, even though I knew it was causing me to hurt. I felt almost shaky with rejection, the way he delicate curled the girl's stray hairs behind her ear made me crazy with envy. It was like witnessing a car crash, you knew that you didn’t want to see any grotesque destruction but for some reason, you couldn’t help but stare at it. He knew I was staring as well, that’s what made it worse.

 

—

 

“New girlfriend?” I dared to ask in psychology after we’d been in silence for the whole lesson. Mrs Wisher had demanded that we work in pairs to discuss what we thought addiction was. I didn’t need to work in a group to tell anybody what it was, addiction was Gerard. He was in my bloodstream, he had altered my brain chemistry and made my neuro functioning futile without him. It had been hypocritical of me to warn Gerard about the dangers of the cocaine that he consumed because without even knowing it, I had been partaking in something even more damaging. I didn’t even want to know if the girl that had been all over him at lunchtime was his new girlfriend but I couldn’t help but ask. It had come up like word vomit as if I was no longer in charge of my actions.

“Hmm?” He hummed quietly barely looking up from the doodle he was drawing in the corner of his textbook.

“Gerard!” I barked at him causing him to halt. I never spoke to him like that, and I don’t think he liked it.

“What?” He replied bluntly.

“What the fuck have I done to you?” I begged. I had the audacity to judge the girls who had fallen at his feet before, but in reality, I was no better than them.

“Nothing, Frank,” He sighed heavily “You never do anything that’s the problem.”

“What the fuck is that supposed to mean?” I asked in confusion.

“You’re too good for me Frank, just stay away.” He mumbled turning further away from my own body that I hadn’t realised had been involuntarily moving closer to his.

“Gerard!” I snapped at him again, a little louder than I intended to. I wanted nothing more than to finally talk to him and though it didn’t seem like much, it was the most he had given me all week so I was not ready to give it up. I should be so fucking lucky though. Mrs Wisher snapped her glance up from the front of the room.

“Boys, be quiet!” She warned us not realising the hurt she was causing me. Gerard hadn’t needed any more persuasion to keep quiet, he just did it anyway.

At the end of class, I wanted to ask him if it was okay if I still went to his house after school as we had missed last Friday but with the way he darted out the room as his life had depended on it, I took it as a no. So instead, I hauled my pathetic self on to the school bus home for the first time in weeks. Last week when Gerard had not been speaking to me, I had either walked home or waited around at Matt’s house for my mom to pick me up but with the drizzly weather and my lack of friends at the minute, neither of them were an option.

“That’ll be £1.60, please,” the bored looking bus driver said to me as I asked for a single ticket for the way home. I wondered if somebody had hurt him as he had hurt me, he seemed to have the same dull outlook to life that I’d recently started possessing.

“Erm,” I mumbled awkwardly as I dug deeply in my trouser pockets and only finding a pound coin.

“Sorry, it’s £1.60.” The bus driver confirmed as if I was fucking stupid and hadn’t understood the first time. Fuck it, I thought as I looked out at the ever approaching downpour that was happening outside, a bit of rain couldn’t make today any worse. As I went to climb off the step to the bus, I felt somebody grab my hand and shove some loose change in there. There, looking down at my pathetic self was James, smiling sympathetically at me.

James was like the feeling of coming home to me. He did not cause me the same giddy excitement that Gerard did, but everything about him screamed familiarity and I almost collapsed in relief that he appeared to finally be talking to me again.

“Come on Franks,” He pushed me back into the warmth of the bus “If I’m going to ride this piece of shit with you, then I need to at least get the back seat.”

“Wh- why are you riding the bus?” I blinked at him dumbly like an idiot, suddenly feeling nervous to be in his presence. I didn’t know why, James was the person who I was now most comfortable around in the whole world. It was just that the way he was looking at me caused something inside which I probably only noticed because of how numb I had been feeling recently. It showed that I wasn’t quite dead yet.

“Because I saw your sorry ass get on it, so I’ve sacked off the date I had tonight to ride the bus home with you.” He admitted proudly, paying the driver and dragging me upstairs to the backseat he had promised himself.

“Date? You have a date?” I asked him eagerly, completely baffled at what I had missed. James didn’t go on dates, he always said that it never bothered him. It had always annoyed Matt and Harry, they were both obsessed with the idea of anything female, but James was like me, happy to wait. Of course though, James did not have a hopeless infatuation with his best friend, which gave him the advantage.

“ _Had_ ,” he corrected me “Matt forced me to go on it, but I conveniently have a migraine so unfortunately, it’s not going ahead. What a shame.”

“You lying fuck, you don’t have a migraine!” I laughed a little at how much he was like me. The bus roared to life interrupting our conversation, but I didn’t think anymore really needed to be said. He was my friend again and that’s almost everything I ever cared about. On our silent bus journey, he nudged my knee gently with his own causing me to look at him. He poked his pink tongue out the corner of his mouth scrunching his face up like someone else I knew tended to do. Although James was not gay, I wished again that it was he who I was to be in love with. I knew he also would not feel the same way back but I couldn’t help think he would have been kinder about it.

“Sorry, Jam,” I mumbled in a guilty manner, the innocence of his actions making it impossible to ignore our quarrels any longer.

“You can’t turn all serious and call me Jam at the same time,” he giggled at the nickname “it’s too paradoxical!”

“I can, it makes it easier for me to be serious.” I nudged him back to show I truly wanted to get back to normal with him.

“It’s okay, Franks, I overreacted.” He simply nodded and resumed the silence between us.

 

———-

I didn’t have to ask him, he just knew to follow me home. Like usual, my parents were not in nor were they expecting me because they’d always assume me to be at Gerard’s house. Instead, me and James had once again ordered from that pizza place causing me De Ja Vu from when I’d admitted my feeling to him.

 

“I’m glad you still like me,” I grinned dopely at him. I often wondered what I’d done to deserve a friend as loyal as James was to me, I couldn’t understand why Gerard thought he was evil or some shit. James had tried so hard to get Gerard to join in with us in our younger days, but it just hadn’t been enough for him. To this day I was still bitter about the fact that me and my friends weren’t good enough for him but Joe and the squad were. Maybe it was for the best though because I’d learnt the hard way that if Gerard was around me, then I only fell more tragically in love with him.

“Oh come on Franks, how could I not?”

“Because I’m an emotional burden on everybody,” I sighed deeply.

“That cunt has got you thinking like that! You know that isn’t true!” He argued his point so strongly that the vein in his forehead began to pop out a little like it always did when he was stressed. Although I was not supposed to be in the phase of loving Gerard, it was still a little hard to hear him talk critically of him so I tried to move the conversation on.

“I hate it when you’re mad at me,” I confessed.

“Oh, yeah?” He couldn’t help the small smirk fighting the way on to his lips, the sadistic prick. I hoped he’d enjoy my misery because I sure as Hell hadn’t.

“Hey!” I argued

“I just erm I like it that you care about me,” he took a noticeable gulp and let the smile fall off his face. He just stared at me, blinking like a fucking goldfish with his mouth wide open.

“Yeah?” I squeaked out feeling a little uncomfortable at the seriousness of our conversation. I hated people being nice to me like this, it always left me feeling awkward. I didn’t deserve James’ kind words nor were they coming from the right set of lips for me to fully appreciate them.

“Yeah,” He inhaled sharply “I mean, I really like that you care about me and I kinda like it that it obviously drives _him_ insane that he knows that.”

“Mmhmm,” I barely stuttered out not feeling familiar with the territory we were approaching. I was never good at serious conversations, I was Frank the fucking class clown not like Harry, our groups own personal therapist.

“Are you thinking of him right now?” He darted his eyes back to the ground, a blush spreading across his cheeks with the forwardness of the question. I didn’t know why he had recently become so obsessed with Gerard, but it was hardly like I minded talking about him.

“I think about him all the time,” I sighed, admitting my most guarded secret. “Every second of every fucking day.”

“Oh,” James responded in a small voice and instead of progressing his response, he started busying himself with a loose thread on his jumper.

“Oh come on!” I cried in frustration, I was the one suffering here, not James! “Don’t clam up on me again, man, I need you! You make me feel erm.. normal.”

“But I’m never good enough am I?” He cried out, shocking me with the emotional charge that his response held. “You’re always going to choose him because I’m just not fucking good enough!” He quickly got to his feet, which I quickly copied. He was not going to escape me this time, I was going to get answers.

“James, what the fuck?” I yelled at him as he grabbed his coat harshly off the stair bannisters and started to put it on as if 10 minutes ago we hadn’t been back to our normal selves.

“I’m tired, Frank. I’m tired of being second best.” He sighed as if he made any sense. I had two completely different relationships with James and Gerard so I don’t know why they always fought for my attention in the same way. Could I not just like them both and leave it at that? Things didn’t always have to mean something!

“You’re tired, James? You’re fucking tired? Try being in love with someone that is fucking repulsed by you.” I cried out my anger getting the better of me.

“Hmm,” he mumbled not being able to meet my gaze. He was irritating me, how could he pretend he was the victim in this situation? “Just answer me this, what has he got that you can’t seem to find in anybody else?”

“I don’t know!” I collapsed to my knees in front of my close friend's concerned face “I don’t know but I love him. I hate it but I fucking love him! It’s fucking exhausting James to love somebody like him and I can’t stand it any longer.” I screamed at him burying my head in my hands wanting to just disappear completely. I was sick and tired of hurting. My bones ached to their very core with holding around this emotional burden with me constantly and my heart was fucking exhausted from pumping blood around my useless body and it had made me snap. My teeth were grinding together harshly as I had a break down right in front of James’ eyes. I had gone past the point of crying, I was pissed and all I could do was tremble and curl myself up into a ball on my landing floor.

“Hey, come on,” he bent down softly and rubbed small circles on my back “I’m sorry I shouldn’t have started this.”

“I love him, I love him, I love him,” I whimpered out pathetically.

“I know come on, let me take you to bed.” He sighed heavily before hauling me to my unsteady feet and up the two flight of stairs to my room. If I were not so emotionally exhausted, I would have been embarrassed that he was having to put me to bed. It was an action I had done for Gerard many times in his darker years but it felt weird to share it with someone else and be on the other end of the sword for once.

“James,” I said weakly as I climbed into my bed. “Do you know how tiring it is trying to help somebody that doesn’t want to be saved? It’s like he’s drowning at sea, and I’m the only one who can see it and I wasted all my energy swimming out to save him but like, he won’t grab my fucking hand. My stupid fucking hand that has tried to pull him out of that shitty water for years.”

“Shh,” He replied gently “come on,” he stroked my hair gently as he placed my heavy head in his lap “you should get some rest you look like you haven’t slept all week again.”

He wasn’t wrong. Since Gerard had fucked me over once again, I hadn’t slept for longer than a couple of hours at a time. I tried to resist the sleep that was taking over me as it was still daylight outside but it just felt good to have James' affections focused on me, slowly lulling me into slumber. Once my eyes were closed, I couldn’t help my mind from wondering and pretending that it was Gerard who was comforting me. If only that were the fucking case.


	16. Don't Hold me for I am Falling back Down

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Things are rarely as simple as they may first seem...
> 
>  
> 
> "You found my heart in the lost and found but the scars they still follow me around."

\------------

“How embarrassing,” I groaned the next morning as my alarm blared at the usual time of 6:30 AM remembering the tragic night before. I couldn’t believe I’d officially had a mental breakdown over Gerard, and James had been there to witness every humiliating second of it. I’d been so worked up that I apparently had slept the whole way through till the morning, meaning I’d had 11 hours of rest. It didn’t fucking feel like it though, I still felt like exhumed mummified remains.

“I told your mom you had a migraine,” James nodded, still lying next to me. Fake migraines seemed to get us out of a lot of shit we didn’t want to deal with lately. “I said that was why you were asleep when she got home.”  
“Thanks, bro.” I grinned at him.  
“Did you want any breakfast?” He asked with the intention of being kind. It didn’t feel like that though, it just made my heart ache as I remembered that Gerard didn’t have to ask if I wanted food this early, he just knew that I wouldn’t. James took me turning my nose up at him as my answer and simply shrugged it off like it was nothing.  
“Hey, you could at least tell me I didn’t make a complete fool of myself last night, yano?” I whined at James who was just sat, smirking at my downfall.  
“Erm excuse me, crying over Gerard Way is embarrassing I’m not going to pretend it’s not to make you feel better.” He jested with me and I retaliated by hitting him with one of my pillows.  
“I did not cry!” I protested. in actual fact I’d done something much worse; I’d lost my fucking mind over him.

———

“The bitch is fucking back boys,” I nodded to my friends as I made my way over to my group using an Elton John reference I knew none of them would get. The only person who would ever understand my weird old man niche music reference was Gerard, but that didn’t matter to me. It just meant I was going have to encourage James to listen to something else other than the AM album.  
“Fucking finally,” Matt grinned at me ruffling my hair “Can you promise me that menopausal bitch Frank is gone for good, yeah?”  
“Yep, he’s gone.” I agreed not really liking myself in that mood either. I was not happy, but at least I was not completely distraught either. The only way I could think of to describe it was like the aftermath of a natural disaster, as everything around me had been destroyed but at least the major danger was over. For so long, I’d been stood in the eye of Gerard’s storm, totally ignorant to everything he was ruining around us until I got sucked into his destruction as well. So it was not only hormonal Frank who I had shoved back to the hole he had crawled out of, but also I had forced my love for Gerard back there too. I was determined to get over him, which meant I was going to ignore him. I was strong enough to do that now, or so I had fucking thought.

 

“Oi, Frankie!” A joyful voice ran over to me where I was stood completely dumbstruck in the middle of the pitch. It was 9 AM, on a Saturday, so why was Gerard running over to me like a little child, as if he hadn't asked me to forget he existed only the day before. He grabbed my hands in his own leaving fire with his touch and the newfound kindness in his eyes. “I have the best fucking news!”  
“H-huh?” I stuttered out. How had I been having a breakdown over his rejection only hours before and now he was acting as if nothing had ever happened? I’d spent the whole week wondering what the fuck was wrong with me and why I repulsed him so much which had apparently been for nothing because he seemed to be over whatever it was. Like always, he was dressed casually but that was my favourite version of him. His eyes were not tired and bloodshot like they always were on a Saturday, instead, they had a new eagerness to them that I begged to know the cause of. All the anger inside me melted away with the gentle touch of his hands on mine, and instead, curiosity plagued me to find out what had made him so fucking happy this morning.  
I wished that I’d had the mental strength to tell him to fuck off like I had planned in my head if he were to ever act like this again, but all I did was blink up at him like the moron I was. He knew he had me wrapped around his little finger, willing to take a bullet for him even if it were him who was the one constantly firing it.  
“It’s a surprise!” He squeezed my closed hands, a defence that I’d done to try and avoid the softness of his own that was only going to entice me in more. For someone who chewed on the skin around their nails as constantly as he did, his hands were one of the things that captivated me most. There had been times where he had been doing the childhood game of comparing our hand size by putting our palms together, laughing about how mine were a little smaller, that I had to physically tear myself away from just clutching him. I obviously had held his hand before, just like the first day of school when he had cried none stop or the time that some guys ,who now worshipped him, had pushed him a little too hard when he was still shy but all of it was platonic. I wanted him to grab my hand and never let go. I wanted him to trace patterns on my skin delicately with his thumb, never getting the strength to disconnect them completely. I wanted him to bring our joined hands to his soft lips and for him to kiss them with a genuine smile. That wouldn’t happen though, instead, he would just grab my closed fists in excitement for something that I probably wouldn’t share.  
“Excuse me, Mr Way we are in the middle of a game here,” Grimshaw came running over to where Gerard had rudely ran into the middle of our pitch. He was lying though, we didn’t have a game today, we were just running through our formations, it was just because Grimshaw wanted to keep me far away from Gerard’s influence. The ironic thing was, though, that I seemed to be more destructive when I did not have him in my life.  
“Yeah whatever, Grimshaw, I’m going I just needed to talk to Frank,” Needed. He said he needed me, in a way.  
“It’s early,” I said dumbly “it’s early and a Saturday!”  
“Yeah, I stayed in last night I was feeling shitty, sorry I didn’t mean to snap at you yesterday I had a migraine.” Migraine, right. It appeared me and James were not the only ones who thought that was a good excuse.  
“Why are you in the park?” I asked him in genuine confusion, I had not seen him at practice for over 6 months now.  
“Because I came to find you! I’m taking you out tonight, dress nice it’s a date.” He winked at me causing my insides to stir. I didn’t know what he was up to, I clearly knew it was not a date but I still could not help my thoughts escape myself. He had never exactly said that to me before. We’d now kissed and he had just mentioned the word date, I mean who could have blamed me?  
Gerard's head shot up from the roar of a kickstart from an engine, a noise that I myself found too harsh and rough on my ears, but that he loved. Although he obviously preferred over-priced sports cars, he still had a thing for shitty rally cars I really could not get on board with. Sometimes when we’d be walking, he’d look at a car that looked like someone had just stolen it from a junkyard, covered in psychedelic stickers and lose his mind over it. I didn’t get it, but like everything in the world, if it made Gerard happy then it was good enough for me. That was with the exception of only a few things, just like the beat-up blue Toyota that had caused the noise in the first place. It was Dean, beeping his horn obnoxiously at Gerard making it clear to me he had not just been in the park for me. I hated Dean, he was well into his 20s and still hanging out with 17-year-olds at the park like the sad loser he was. No one ever said that to Dean though, no one that didn’t want their legs broken anyway.  
“Ah bug, I have to go,” He looked over my shoulder at the car and dropped my hands quickly as if they were suddenly burning him. “Come to mine at like 6!”  
“O-okay,” I stumbled out my response. I had at least hoped that I would have made him work for my compliance, but no here I was falling sucker to his every move. I tried my hardest to ignore James’ glare and instead watched Gerard run towards Dean’s death trap excuse of a vehicle.  
“It’s a date, bug!” He called behind him, leaving me standing there swaying in his wake.

——-

“Don’t.” I said bluntly to James who was waiting for me once coach Grimshaw had blown his final whistle, “Please.”  
I think that I was practically begging James to not judge me for the stupid mistake I was making, there was no need. I already hated myself enough for it.  
“I’m not going to say anything, Frank. You’re your own person you make your own mistakes.”

A word popped into my head that Gerard used to be obsessed with when he was younger. Akrasia. I felt it suited us both more than ever now. I mean I kept falling back into him whenever he came calling despite knowing I was going to get hurt and he continued to consume the drugs I knew were going to end up killing him.

“Anyway,” James smiled warmly at me “I am fucking starving and it’s nearly 11, Franks, which means that you must be too.”  
Maybe he wasn’t so different from the good side of Gerard after all.


	17. You don’t Love me big Fucking Deal, I’ll never tell you how I Feel

I stood nervously outside of Gerard’s house not having the luxury of knocking as we were way past that point of friendship now. I wanted a moment to gather myself but I couldn’t just wait outside his front door like a weirdo, I couldn’t let him see how nervous I was. I really did think about cancelling on him as some small revenge for leaving me waiting all of last week but I couldn’t do that. I was so helplessly in love with him I couldn’t help but engulf myself in those few lucid moments I got to spend with him. I had my whole life to get over him, I mean at some point he was going to get married and have kids and all the normal shit, so I might as well embrace him whilst I still could.

It appeared that I had deliberated too long though and mentally kicked myself when the door opened just as I was about to walk in. I almost fell over in relief when it wasn’t Gerard but in fact his younger brother Mikey. There had been a time that Gerard would have killed anything that crossed his brother but even Mikey had grown tired of his bullshit meaning they didn’t speak all that much anymore. Mikey was in that phase in his life that I think Gerard had missed out on, making it difficult to watch his brother succeed when he had previously failed. Mikey was only thirteen, the same age that I think Gerard was mentally stuck in. We’d learnt about it in class, when somebody sufferers terribly, they get almost developmentally stuck and I don’t think Gerard could quite move on from his cruel past. He was obsessed with avenging it. This was only made worse by the fact his younger brother was popular and athletic without the need for illegal influences. I don’t think Mikey fully understood why his brother had turned so cold towards him and instead blamed him for everything. Mikey heard back every evil thing Gerard did through the grapevine at school and it must have been tough for him. Gerard didn’t care though, he didn’t care about anybody.

“Hey, Mikes,” I nodded to him, blushing a little at the fact he’d just caught me just standing outside their front door like an idiot.

“Frank!” He said in a confused manner “It’s erm, been a while.”

He was right, I hadn’t seen Mikey since the Friday before the one where his brother had kissed me, 3 weeks ago now. I was jealous myself of Mikey, he was at that age where he and his friends would ride around on their bikes until the street lights came on and they would rush back home to play Xbox together until the sun rose and they would do it all over again the next day. I wished me and my friends were still young and innocent enough for shit like that, instead, my friends were now preoccupied with boobs rather than the new Call of Duty.

“Yeah, how’s life man?” I asked even though I knew he was eager to get his BMX bike from the garage and ride off to meet his group. Mikey’s friends weren’t toxic like Gerard’s were, they all cared about each other and growing organically together. He was just at that age of first kisses and dates and it was somewhat pathetic that I was no more experienced than them despite my age advantage.

“Good, I mean G’s being a prick to me, but when is he not?” He sighed heavily, also not being the biggest fan of the cocky dick head his brother had become.

“Tell me about it,” I smirked at him.

“You let him treat you like shit, Frank you know that right?” He laughed at me. Fuck, even a thirteen-year-old could tell that he walked all over me.

“Yeah, but he’s my best friend ain’t he?”

“Yeah you gotta promise me you’ll always stick around, yeah? If it wasn’t for you that cunt Joe would ruin him.” He scowled, also sharing my hatred for Joe.

“Mikey! Don’t say that word, you’re too young,” I half smiled at him “but you’re right he is a cunt.”

“Exactly! Anyway, I gotta go Pete’s waiting for me.” He excused himself and ran off down the path where his little emo best friend was waiting for him. Mikey and Pete were inseparable despite Mikey being a preppy teenager and Pete taking the Misfits lyrics a little too seriously. They balanced each other out perfectly and I was just thankful he had someone to fall back on with each rejection from his older brother.

I took a moment to watch them ride off down the street happily together like a creep hoping that me and Gerard could share the same joy later. I was fucking nervous, it was to the point that I hadn’t been able to eat at the old diner earlier with my friends, all because the word date kept racing around in my head. Surely, he could not have meant an actual date, could he? But then again why had he told me to dress nicely. I hated that I had obeyed to every single word he’d said, choosing to wear a grey polo as oppose to my usual casual t-shirts, just to impress him. He made a fleeting comment that he liked it months ago and it had stuck in my head so perhaps that’s why it hadn’t been a question in my mind that I was going to wear it tonight. I had spent all day practically buzzing for this moment and now that it was here, all I wanted to do was run away. We hadn’t gone out properly just the two of us in the longest time, and now things were different between us. I thought of all the things he could have planned, he did say it was a surprise after all. The fact he’d obviously put effort into this was enough to force me to drag my feet through the door and into his empty hallway.

“G?” I called not wanting to be too intrusive. I’d made that mistake once before when I’d eagerly walked down into his basement bedroom and seen way too much of the female anatomy for my liking. He’d screamed at me to get out, despite the fact he himself was fully clothed. He hadn’t had to warn me twice though, I bolted quickly out of his house trying to rid myself of the image of a naked girl from my grade that was now burnt into my brain.

“Coming!” He called cheerily up the stairs. Thankfully, I could only hear one set of footsteps bounding up towards me. “You look hot, bug.” He stared at me with his mouth open, leaving me flustered. I dug my already bitten down nails into my palm to rid myself of the thought of just going over to him and pushing him down into the sofa. Surely, that was not a normal thing to say to your assumed heterosexual best friend, right? Or maybe it was just my wishful thinking reading too much into things again.

“I don’t erm, you do,” I said awkwardly and then bit my lip hard as I visibly cringed at what I’d just said. I wasn’t like Gerard, I didn’t just give suggestive compliments like that. I thought I was more neutral, I mean I’d never called James or Kenny hot before I normally just said I liked their new trainers like a normal friend did.

“You think I look hot?” He raised a suggestive eyebrow at me, causing my stomach to do that stupid flip thing it always did when he acted like this around me. Although I couldn’t exactly admit it, I thought he looked beautiful. He’d finally prised off that stupid baseball cap that was normally glued to his head even though I was growing a soft spot for it. Instead of that, he was dressed in his tight black jeans and a polo similar to mine except it was in his favourite shade of fucking black too. Gerard could try and deny his emo phase all he wanted to, but most clothes he wore still lacked colour.

“I- erh,” I stuttered out not knowing whether or not to deny I thought he looked attractive. On one hand, I wanted to be more confident as it seemed to work for me last time but on the other, I didn’t want him to clam up again as I didn’t think I could handle it for a third time.

“Are you okay, bug?” He asked coming over slowly, his eyes dancing all over my face. If he did not like me like that then why did he treat me like this? I never gave my other friends that same suggestive look, and I’d never seen him do it to anybody else that he wasn’t trying to fuck. I couldn’t even find a way to respond because my breath was caught in my throat. I was frozen. “I meant it, I think you look...” he stopped speaking and instead gently moved a stray hair from in front of my eye like he had to that girl in the hall on Friday. My heart was pounding furiously in my chest like it was an overstimulated lion trying to escape a cage. It was roaring at me to fucking act on Gerard’s advances. I just couldn’t though, even when he left his hand cupping my cheek so softly I barely knew it was there. Physically, I felt as if all the blood had drained from my body and I wasn’t sure how I was still standing. My ears had popped like they may as if I were on a declining aeroplane and instead my screaming thoughts fizzed in my mind making my skin hot and prickly. He started to massage his fingertips gently in my hair which would have made me think I was dreaming if it were not for the furious butterflies in my stomach causing me to nearly keel over with anxiety. When he had taught me how to kiss somebody, he had told me to flicker my eyes to meet their own and then back down to their lips, so why the fuck was he doing that to me? I’d fallen in love with his eyes a long time ago, their amazing olive hue and his thick set of lashes which displayed them but I hadn’t realised it had been possible to fall even deeper into them when they were looking at me like that. I thought he was as close as he could possibly be but still, he found a way to close even more space between us as he shuffled his socked feet closer to mine. I thought that he was going to kiss me right up until I heard the shrill blare of his doorbell fill the silence between us.

“Ah, they’re here!” He grinned down at me, quickly moving away from me as if the act was a figment of my imagination.

“Wh-who?” I squeaked out, barely recognising my own tone with how my eardrums were banging from the speed my blood had been pumping around them.

“Your surprise, bug!” He walked past me to the door leaving me baffled. “Hey, baby!” He smiled happily at the girl from Friday who had been sat on his lap in the hall.

No. No. No.

He bent down and kissed her deeply, the kiss that was fucking meant for me.

“Franks, come here and meet Hannah, she’s your date for the evening.” He grinned dopely at me as if he had not just destroyed me with one stupid action. There from behind the girl he was kissing emerged a small blonde girl, waving nervously at me. Shit, it was a date but not quite in the way that I had hoped.


	18. Someone told me a girl I liked fell in love and all I did was cry

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "Broke my heart when I knew , that I could never be with you"
> 
> This is one of my favourite songs of all time which is giving me the emotional charge to be melodramatic 
> 
> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hDmga1y9dKE

\-----------

 

I felt like a fool. A fucking fool. I hadn’t fully even admitted it to myself but I think in my heart I thought he’d meant a date between the two of us. How could I have been so stupid though? It was clear from the slightly nervous looking girl with too much fake tan on stood in front of me that he meant a double date between ourselves and two girls. His girl.

“Babe, this is my best friend in the whole world, Frank,” He grinned in my direction proudly pointing me out to his new chew toy. I didn’t really know her, she had been an external candidate from a different school who had joined our school's sixth form at the start of the year who I didn’t care to know the name of. I wished she wasn’t pretty or that she at least had one imperfection but I could not find a single flaw on her stupid face. Her skin was practically pore-less, her makeup looked professional and her brunette and blonde balayage hair fell perfectly on her slim shoulders. Her body was exactly Gerard’s favourite, hourglass with wide hips and a large chest, I didn’t stand a fucking chance. He looked down at her like I’d never seen him look at anybody else before, like how I looked at him when he was not looking.

“Hey, you’re the soccer captain, right? I’m Amber.” She confirmed her voice as soft and sweet as her appearance. “And this is my best friend, Hannah”

The girl behind her stepped forward and I felt bad for instantly judging her. She was not as confident as her friend, it was clear to see but I just didn’t think I would be the one to change that. The girl I know knew as Hannah was not ugly, in fact, she was exactly the kind of girl my friends would have begged to know but to me, she was not Gerard. My heart felt as if it were ripping in two, I could barely breathe let alone respond.

“He’s just nervous, babe,” Gerard answered for me shooting me a death look which was a nonverbal cue to fucking respond. I couldn’t though because my whole fucking world had just crashed around me. I was screaming, and no one else could fucking hear me. 

“I- I.” I stuttered before bolting past the group and running to the bathroom where I slammed the door shut and locked myself in. I breathed heavily trying to calm down but it was futile. I slid down the door slowly, biting my fist hard to try and keep the whimpers in. When I reached the floor though, the dam that I had built around my feelings started to show cracks and a fat tear began dribbling down my cheek. I had been dreading this day for years now, the day that Gerard finally fell in love with somebody who was not me. 

I hadn’t cried in the longest of times, and the act felt unfamiliar and strange. I didn’t like it. I curled into a ball and wept silently willing the stupid, pathetic tears to stop. I knew that from the way that he looked at her and called her baby, that it was over. I couldn’t believe that I’d been optimistic enough earlier to believe we still had a few more years together before he settled down. I knew that wasn’t the case though, I knew that from the way he adored that girl. I thought it had been I who had caused the smile on his face earlier, how fucking wrong could I have been? 

“Frankie,” Gerard’s soft voice came from behind the bathroom door “Can I come in?”

I scrubbed furiously at my face refusing to believe at 17-years-old I had just cried over him. I swallowed hard, with the attempts to control myself and rid the lump in my throat. I wanted nothing more than to run past him and go home to resume my session of feeling sorry for myself but that would mean having to explain  why I was so upset and I just wasn’t ready to do that. I had been glad that I’d managed to compose myself a little because I heard the clicking of a coin dislodging the lock on the door and the door open. I should have been smarter, I knew that Gerard knew how to jam that stupid fucking lock ever since we were little and we’d have arguments and I’d come in here to hide. He would always come in with a guilty look plastered on his face and slip his chubby hand into my own and tell me how sorry he was. It appeared not a lot had changed because I soon felt his frame crouch next to my own.

“Have you been crying?” He asked with what seemed like genuine concern. He didn’t fucking care though, he never had.

“No,” I grumbled at him, crossing my arms with the attempts of coming across pissed and not upset. 

“I’m sorry, I should have warned you,” He said squeezing my bunched up fist. I knew that he meant about that Hannah girl but I couldn’t help but wished he meant about Amber. When I’d seen them together the day before, I had not realised the way he looked at her because I had been too selfishly wrapped up in the way he had been looking at me. I’d probably made it all up though, he wasn’t fucking looking at me any different to how he had for the past seventeen years. Like he’d told me, a kiss didn’t mean anything, did it? “I know that you get a bit anxious and I shouldn’t have sprung this on you.”

“I never thought I’d hear you talk about my anxiety issues.” I laughed facetiously.

“I know, bug. I never thanked you, yano?” He prised my hand apart and threaded his fingers through my own. His hand was not chubby anymore, it was strong and comforting and I had never felt more scared with it being there. I was too weak to deny him, instead, I clutched at his hand as if it were my lifeline. 

“For what?” I asked him

“I know you think it was Joe who dragged me out of my shell, but it wasn’t. It was you and I was just trying to repay you for all that you did for me because I think that you’re amazing, you’re better than I could ever dream to be and I just wanted someone else to get to see you how I do.” He brought our joined hands close to his lips, so close that I could feel his shaky breath on my knuckles. 

“But, you’re enough for me. I don’t need anybody else,” I whimpered pathetically at him.

He did not reply straight away, just sighed heavily. “I was becoming too dependent on you and it wasn’t fair, Frankie.” 

“But I don’t care! I want you to need me!”

“You don’t understand!” He almost cried at me with something I did not quite recognise in his voice “Look, I know this is mad but I think I’m in love this time, bug.”

There it was. Exactly what I didn’t want to hear.

“And it’s fucking amazing, I just wish you could know what love felt like, yano?” He grinned on our closed hands. I hadn’t even realised that he’d closed the distance and he now had his lips on my knuckles because I had felt so numb. I was so incredibly dead inside that not even his mouth on my bare skin could breathe life into me. He didn’t know that I had felt love, but it was not the rosy kind he had, it was dark, twisted and fucking deadly. 

“How can you love somebody you’ve known for five minutes?” I asked weakly.

“I’ve been seeing her for a couple of months now, I’m sorry I didn’t tell you.” He replied remorsefully at the fact he’d kept it a secret from me. 

“But- but you had sex with-“

“Yeah, I know!” He hushed me “but I made it official on Thursday because I realised I needed to stop fucking about.”

I didn’t reply just turned my head so he didn’t see me struggle to compose myself. 

“Come here” He simply added throwing an arm around my shoulder “You’ll always be my number one, Bug”

If only he fucking meant that.

———-

Gerard eventually dragged me out of the bathroom after he had his arm around me for a little too long. Despite my hurt, I couldn’t help but relax into him, enjoying the smell of his cologne. He might have a girlfriend now, but she didn’t know him as I did. He was never going to share the dark corners of his mind with her, and she was never going to know the right things to say to drag him out of his depression. 

I only agreed to go on that stupid date because if I did not, it would have been obvious that I was upset. I could sit in my room and mope about him tomorrow, but as for that moment, I had to put on a brave face and drag myself on a date whilst watching the love of my life claim he was in love. 

“Sorry about that, girls,” Gerard said dragging me back into the living room where Amber and Hannah had been waiting for us. “Frank had an erm migraine.”

I was getting sick of that excuse. 

“Oh no!” Hannah said sympathetically “Do you want some ibuprofen? I have some in my bag!”

“No thank you, Hannah,” I mumbled, “It’s going a bit now.”

 

————-

I spent the whole way into town being weirdly silent. I had tried my hardest to join in the phatic conversations about the weather but I couldn’t do it. Gerard had tried to get me to sit in the front next to him but I’d refused. I needed a moment to compose my thoughts and zone out alone so I pretended I was busy texting somebody something that couldn't wait.

“Frank! Get off your fucking phone, man!” Gerard called from the front seat like the hypocrite he was. He was always the worse for going on his phone when people were talking to him, he just wanted to pretend he was somebody who he wasn’t in front of Amber. From the way she looked at him, I don’t think she knew how many girls he had lead on and the way he would quickly drop them when somebody new showed interest. “Who you texting, anyway?”

“James,” I mumbled. It wasn’t a lie, I was texting James about the tragedy that was my life. He was sympathetic, but also he found it hilarious that I was on my first date with a girl that was completely unaware the only person I’d ever really had feelings for was a male and sat in the fucking driver's seat of the car. 

“Boo!” Gerard whined, reaching behind him and snatching the phone from my hand. As a result of his stupid actions, we swerved into the middle of the road.

“G!” Amber whined. I didn’t know why everyone kept calling him that, that was my name for him.

“Sorry, babe.” He said sheepishly and shoved my phone in the cup holder of his car, far away from my reach. The word ‘babe’ irritated me to no fucking end. It was constant with him, if he was fucking a girl then it was _babe_ this and _babe_ that. I didn’t find it a term of endearment, more an annoying habit he had so he wouldn’t get girls names confused. Then again, I was probably just bitter because he was yet to call me anything of the sort. With Amber’s complaint, he quickly corrected his driving, something that he never usually did. 

—————

“So, how long have you played soccer for?” Hannah asked, trying for the millionth time to drag a conversation from me as we got to the restaurant. I felt bad because I had barely said two words to her, instead choosing to stare jealously at Gerard and Amber. I hated the feeling of envy, it was like an uncomfortable knot in the pit of my stomach that’s pulled tighter with every flirtatious giggle or gentle kiss. I wanted to kiss him so badly, so badly in fact that it was all I thought about. Instead of that though, I had the displeasure of watching him give those priceless kisses to somebody else. 

“Erm, like forever.” I shrugged awkwardly. Hannah clearly did not care about football, just like I didn’t really give a shit about her horse riding passion she felt the need to go on about. I felt bad, she was an extremely nice girl but I was too hurt not to be selfish. I wished it wasn’t weird to suggest her to go on a date with Harry instead, all I could think of was how perfect they would be together. I was relieved when the waiter came over to take our order because it meant that not only did Hannah stop trying to force a conversation out of me, but Gerard and Amber’s lips were also dragged apart. 

“I need to pee, do you need to pee?” Gerard kicked me harshly under the table once I’d muttered out my order and the waiter had gone to fulfil our requests. I hadn’t been exactly hungry so all I had gotten was a side portion of fries that I was most definitely not going to eat. 

“Yeah,” I sighed getting up “I totally need to pee.” 

It was clear we were lying, I mean the way he furiously grabbed my hand and dragged me towards the bathroom suggested that we weren’t going  for its normal uses. I assumed he was going to yell at me for being so rude and closed off to Hannah but he didn’t. Instead, he dragged me into the room and locked the door behind us and yanked me into a harsh hug. It wasn’t what I had been expecting so I just dangled my limbs helplessly and he wrapped his own arms tightly around me. He clung to me with such force that I could barely breathe. 

“Tell me why you are so sad, bug!” He demanded once he had finally pulled back. Although I wanted nothing more than to melt into him and wrap my arms around him, I didn’t. I was too scared of not being able to stop myself from falling too deeply. He did not retract his arms fully, just kept them firmly on my shoulders reminding me that he was there. That was the thing with Gerard, no matter how cruel he could be to me, he would suddenly care too much making me forgive every stupid mistake he’d ever made. 

“I’m not sad,” I sighed leaning my head against his slightly taller shoulder. I couldn’t quite stop myself from inhaling his scent deeply, letting it relax me completely. I had never smoked any drug, but breathing Gerard in felt like I was consuming second-hand smoke, not exactly like having him directly, but enough to still get the hit. 

“I can tell that you’re sad!” He protested at me, furrowing his brow into a slight frown. Despite the slightly tormented look on his face, he was still the most beautiful thing to ever grace this earth. 

“I’m sad because you took my phone, G!” I forced myself to laugh even though that was not what I wanted to do. I was referring to the fact that once we had parked up and gotten out the car, Gerard had proceeded to tuck my phone tightly away in his pocket, far away from my grasp. I’d assumed it was to stop me using it so that I was forced to confront the tragic date he had set up but his whole demeanour suddenly changed suggesting otherwise.

“You know you were trying to make me jealous,” He said suddenly, tightening the grip he had around my shoulders. I shot my head up to look at him, but his gaze was directed behind me not being able to face me. 

“Huh?” I asked with a genuine perplexity. 

“I just hate it,” He sighed once again cupping his hands around my jaw as he had done earlier, this time with a new harshness to his actions “I hate how he looks at you.”

“Looks at me?” I squeaked.

“Yeah, I mean you do this thing to people,” He flickered his eyes over every feature of my face before settling on my quivering lips. “this thing that drives people insane!”

“I don’t get what you mean,” I begged him desperately for answers he was not going to give up. It was futile, I knew that but I still pleaded with him. He had been weird like this around me before, but never to this degree. If he had not been driving so sensibly, and talking so coherently I could have believed that he was high. 

“Course you don’t,” He laughed a little crudely in my face “How could you get something that I don’t even understand?”

“Gerard,” I began but was interrupted by him

“Why don’t you like Hannah? I thought she was your type.” He was referring to the make-believe type I had previously told him of blonde curvy girls. I’d only ever said that to him in the first place as an act of repetition so he did not get suspicious. The reality was that blonde girls with wide hips were Matt’s type not my own. My type couldn’t have been further from that because my type was Gerard. 

“ _Pfft_ ,” I dragged my eyes away from his, that I hadn’t realised had been glued to each other “I’m going to be alone forever, G, that’s inevitable.”

“Why would you say that?”

“Because, I just don’t like other people, G,” It was easier to tell him the truth in riddles. By saying that I did not like other people, he did not know that I actually meant I didn’t like anybody else but him. Through careful word choice, I could be completely honest with him without really telling him a thing. Despite only the small victory, I still felt relief. I probably only felt good though because of the way he was holding me so close to himself. 

“But other people like you, Frank.” He said so simply as if that would ever be enough to answer the questions racing through my head. “I mean look at you,” He tilted my chin up to make our gazes meet again, and then began to trace my lips with one of his thumbs. The gentle touch on my lip made it quiver, as if a stray hair had landed on it causing me to apprehensively take in every single thing that he did. I was so fucking thirsty and he was like a cool glass of water I couldn’t help but drink in. “You’re perfect.”

“You have to say that, you’re my best friend.” I blushed profusely at his constant compliments that I wasn’t sure how to accept. I didn’t know what was wrong with him today, but for saying he was apparently in love, he was paying me too much attention.

“Hmm,” He hummed simply “anyway, we gotta go or they’re gonna think we’re _fucking_ in here or something.”

That was perhaps the oddest thing he had ever said to me. Even when his friends made jokes about how they thought our Friday night meetups were a little more suggestive than we lead on, he would laugh and shake it off. There was no humour to his voice at that moment though. 

“Yeah. We should probably go or they’re going to get suspicious and that would be ridiculous, right?” I sighed letting some of my true feelings escape. I only had the confidence to say it because I knew he had stopped listening, instead he was looking at my phone crossing off every notification I had gotten from James.

It was strange, Gerard didn’t particularly like any of my friends but the way he thrust the device back into my hands and said “Kenny’s text you, you should probably reply,” made me more confused than ever as to why it was just James he hated enough to ignore. 

“Oh, and Frank?” He said as I went to leave the stall that we had been stood in together “Be nice to Hannah, yeah? It’s making me cringe how hard she’s trying to impress you, _Mr Unavailable_.”

Maybe if he hadn’t set me up on a date that I had said I did not want, then I wouldn’t have had to act so cold to a girl who didn’t deserve it. Still, though, he was right it wasn’t fair. She didn’t know that there was no way on this Earth that to me, she could not compare to the stupid idiot sat across from us, making out with her best friend. 

As I sat back in my seat, I couldn’t help but notice Gerard’s eyes burning into me once again. This time it was worse though, because even when he kissed Amber, his eyes opened for a brief moment as they met my own. To distract myself from his weird mood, I decided to catch up on my messages and opened up the notifications that Gerard had crossed off from James.

 

Shit.

**\- It’s not that poor girl's fault that you're helpless in love with your best friend. Try not to make it too obvious lol**

 

Shit. Fucking shit.

He had so obviously read that, and all though it was a little ambiguous, from the way he was staring at me, he knew something was not right. I had to think quickly, I needed a disguise. I glanced around frantically trying to find something that screamed heterosexuality and settled on the perfect excuse sat there right next to me.

“So, erh, Hannah, how long did you say you’ve been horse riding for?” I asked her, finally turning my body towards her, causing a wide smile to spread on her perfectly glossed lips. 


	19. I hate to think about you with somebody else

Once I'd relaxed a little more, I began to actually enjoy myself. Well, enjoy myself as much as I could considering Gerard kept throwing his new found relationship in my face. I'd learnt that despite the confidence difference, that Hannah was better than Amber ever could be and that was not even me being biased. I'd learnt that quickly by the way Amber was quick to judge strangers who did not quite meet her requirements like the innocent young girl who served our food who apparently had "makeup that looked as if it were done by a clown". It made me slightly angry to hear her talk so flippantly with something that could destroy someone's confidence so quickly, especially because I had to trust her not to hurt Gerard. She obviously did not know about his unfortunate past but he had spent his whole early youth growing up around ass holes like that. It only took one stupid comment about his weight to make him obsess over it even all those years later and it made me sad that she did not notice he merely knocked the unhealthy food around his plate instead of eating it. Hannah was different though, I knew she had only forced a laugh at her bitchy friend's comments to keep her happy; I was familiar with that reaction myself. I liked the way her pretty blue eyes lit up when she spoke about her horse she'd regretfully named Edward after her childhood Twilight obsession, it made me smile. Although I had not acted like it recently, I really enjoyed meeting new people, especially people like Hannah. She seemed to actually care about what I had to say as well, even staying interested when I went on a five-minute rant on how I felt about Madrid's glory hunters just because of the respectability behind their name.   
"And like, I've stuck with Liverpool since I was a baby, like through the bad times and all you know? I'm not just going to switch to a different team just because Salah might leave us for-" I continued as we walked to the bowling alley across the walkway after we had finished eating. "Oh, sorry, I'm chatting shit again." I blushed.  
"No!" Hannah said quickly "I like it when you talk about football, I mean I don't really understand it but I like the way it makes you happy."

"She's just being nice Frank, you're fucking boring." Gerard snapped at me harshly but with the encouragement of Hannah, I just didn't care. She didn't think I was boring so for the first time in my life, I ignored him.

"I hate Ronaldo anyway, he's a showboating prick!" I laughed, enjoying that it also seemed to make Hannah giggle.

"I said you were boring, Frank! Shut the fuck up!" Gerard marched over to me and pushed me harshly. Of course, we play fought all the time, this felt different though because for the first time in our lives he caused me to genuinely stumble with the force of his contact. I didn't know why he had a sudden personality change but with the way Hannah was making me feel, I didn't care. I wasn't stupid, I wasn't in love with her or even remotely close but for once it felt nice having someone trying to get my attention instead of the other way around. I quickly composed myself and carried on ignoring him, it appeared after all this time I'd found a way to drive him a little crazy back.

"Frank, can you show me?" Hannah asked batting her fake eyelashes at me as we stood at the bowling alley. I knew that she knew how to bowl already because she was not an idiot but Gerard was so busy with his lips attached to Amber's that I could only oblige. He was kissing her softly and slowly, just like he had done to me and it was driving me insane. If it were not for Hannah being here to drag me back into a lucid state, I don't know what I would have done.

"You just like, here," I forced a smile down at her, not being used to being this close to someone shorter than me for once. I wrapped my arms tightly around her and guided her arm down the aisle, where she knocked over eight out of the ten pins. Her almost strike caused her to giddily jump all over me and wrap me in a tight hug, wafting the sweet scent of her conditioner to my nose. It was strange, for years now, I'd been wrapped up in a very masculine world so I was embracing every touch of her soft skin and delicate frame. Moments like this were what confused me, it wasn't as if females repulsed me, in fact, I often I thought of them as being enticing and beautiful but it wasn't that simple. As well as the soft touch of a girl, I also liked the strong grasp of a man, especially my best friends grip so I mostly just ended up fucking giving up at trying to comprehend what I wanted. I'd never thought about sex all that much like a real thing. Every time I had got lost in my dreams of my body being with somebody else it was always blurry and ambiguous, never putting a face or real sex to the body because I wasn't quite sure who I wanted it to be. Well, there was one person who I wanted it to be but I tried not to think of him in that way because it just made it awkward when we'd be play fighting and those intrusive images would force their way to the front of my mind and I'd have to awkwardly excuse myself so he could not see how turned on I was. 

"Pathetic," Gerard marched past us, finally disconnecting himself from Amber's lips long enough to take his go. I didn't know why he had become so irritated from earlier but I knew that I almost liked it. I had been so numb for so long that with every harsh comment it felt as if he was hitting me. The pain was a welcomed change from the helplessness I had felt when he'd ignored me. 

When the awkward game of bowling finally ended, Gerard had insisted we were to go back to his house as his parents were at the same wedding mine we at for the night. It was some woman from work that mine and Gerard's mom's were close to so there was no danger of them returning and ruining Gerard's plans. It wasn't like his mom ever tried to stop him bringing girls back, but she wasn't exactly supportive of it. She'd learnt a long time ago to stop introducing herself and getting to know the girls he fucked because it would only be a couple of weeks before somebody else would be in their place.

"G, your mom told me to remind you to take the chicken out the freezer for tomorrow," Amber smiled sweetly up at her new boyfriend. It was stupid that something so simple could make my already broken heart crumble even more. I couldn't believe that Gerard had willingly brought a girl around his mother, and it fucking hurt to realise that he had. 

"Yeah, yeah, babe," he rolled his eyes going over to defrost that stupid fucking chicken that had caused that knot in my stomach to get even tighter. "Frank, come here." He demanded. I was in the middle of a deep conversation with Hannah about why we both thought that the Arctic Monkeys were better before the new album, but from the urgency in Gerard's voice, I jumped to my feet and followed him into the kitchen.

"What?" I said coldly to him, embarrassed at his new rudeness towards Hannah who was too polite to tell him to fuck off. 

"Just was bored," He shrugged "I needed you to give me some attention."

"Well, can't Amber give you that? I mean it's not like you to introduce a girl to your mom so she must be special." I replied bitterly. If he wanted to be petty, then I could be worse. I mean I had seven years of repressed feelings built up to allow that. 

"Yeah, my mom really likes her, bug," he grinned at me and suddenly I couldn't be angry anymore, just hurt that it was not me the caused that smile.

 "Yeah?" My voice cracked as I tried to be happy for my best friend.

"Yeah, she says she's never seen me like this around anyone before."

"Well, she's really nice, G, I hope you're very happy together but you kinda interrupted my conversation with Hannah so I'm going to go back now." I walked straight past him and out of the kitchen to rekindle my conversation with my date for the evening. I knew I'd left him at his kitchen island staring dumbly at me with a frozen chicken still in his hand, I didn't care though. Well, that was a lie but at least it was the start of me not caring. I didn't know how he had the audacity to claim he was devoted to that girl because if they had been seeing each other for two months then that meant he had slept with at least two girls and kissed me in that time period. I did not care for Amber's personality, but I didn't think even she deserved to be lied to like that. 

———

"Everything okay?" I heard Hannah ask from behind me. We had been in the middle of watching a film, well me and Hannah had been watching it and our two best friends had been relentless grinding against each other under a blanket much to our annoyance. If the disgusting noise of him with his tongue shoved down her throat was not enough, her giggles and escaped moans did not help the situation. I found it fucking weird he needed everybody to see him act like this, it was bad enough that he felt the need to tell me about it let alone show me. I just hoped the making out was where it stopped in the living room, but he'd had sex around me before when he thought I was asleep so nothing surprised me anymore. He was disgusting and everything I would have hated if I wasn't in love with him. I'd come to the kitchen to get myself a drink to avoid their steamy session and it appeared Hannah had done the same. I feared that they were now in the living room on their own but it wasn't enough to stop me staring out the window at the autumnal night sky. I'd just become infatuated with the way the purple clouds had swirled in such a way that they only showed the brightest of stars through them, it reminded me that there were bigger things out there. There were billions of other people gazing out at the same sky I was, my problems were insignificant really despite how drastic they felt. In a million years from now when the Earth was over from war or climate change, then my love for Gerard would finally be dead too. 

"Yeah, just didn't feel like watching some soft porn." Although my comment was like a joke, I couldn't bring myself to laugh, I just couldn't face it. 

"Nah, me neither," Hannah pressed her lips together indicating to me it was not the first time she had been ditched by her friend for a boy's attention. "My life is so tragic."

"How come?" I frowned failing to see how her life was in any way tragic. She was beautiful, kind and intelligent, a million times better than her best friend that she appeared to envy so much. 

"Being best friends with somebody like Amber, it's draining."

"Tell me about it," I smirked a little causing her to smile back at me at our shared pain. 

"Yeah but you've got soccer, Frank. Everyone thinks you're so fucking cool and you really are, it's like you don't want the popularity you just care about being nice to people." She continued to smile at me.

"You're gonna make me blush," I jested "Anyway, how come I never noticed you at school if you knew who I was?"

"Because you weren't looking Frank," she simply nodded "and no one notices me when Amber is around, let's be honest!"

"You need to stop thinking like that!" I protested, making her jump a little with my eagerness, "you're so pretty, you're really interesting and you're a good person, Hannah!"

Before my words could even fully settle, she had closed the distance between us and gingerly pressed her lips on my own. It was so new to me, the taste of her strawberry flavoured gloss and the cautiousness of her actions but I didn't hate it. The attention was nice, even if It was only a small peck. "Sorry," she pulled back awkwardly 

"I never usually act like that I just really wanted to do that."

"N-no," I stuttered "It's fine." With that, she closed the distance between us once more and kissed me again, more confidently this time. I wrapped my arms around her waist as she brought her own up to cling to my neck as we stayed with our lips slightly parted, but pressed together. Everything Gerard had taught me suddenly came naturally and I delicately pecked at her lips slightly opening my mouth to which she did the same. I did not feel anything inside when she kissed me, not like the fiery passion Gerard had caused before, but I didn't exactly hate it. I was finally receiving the attention I had been craving for years now, just from somebody else. I tried to not compare the two because they were two completely different things and putting Hannah against Gerard was unfair because he was something more than human to me. Before the kiss could progress any further, a giant clatter came from behind us causing us to pull back from each other but not retract our grip completely. 

"Oh, erm, sorry," Gerard fumbled awkwardly at the kitchen door, his hair sticking up wildly and his lips puffy and wet. He looked different to me in a way, his usual confident demeanour had completely vanished and instead, he stood awkwardly folding his arms around himself. "I just came to erm, get a drink." He obviously was lying, he had a full can of beer in the other room that he had been too preoccupied to drink.

"It's okay, Gerard." Hannah smiled awkwardly detangling herself from me "I need to talk to Ambs, anyway." As she walked out of the kitchen, a new spring in her step, I couldn't help but watch her and it appeared Gerard couldn't either. 

"I'm glad you're getting on so well," Gerard said dryly clearly not meaning the words he was producing. 

"I thought you'd be happier for me. Aren't you the one who was always trying to get me to kiss girls?" I was confused, wasn't this what he wanted?

"Yeah, I'm fucking ecstatic," He said with a contradictory dull tone to his voice "now can you come back in the living room please and stop fucking in my kitchen." It was hypocritical for him to suggest that I was the vulgar one, but the way he grabbed my arm harshly did not leave me room to think about it too much. When we got to the living room, I tried to resume my position on the seat next to Hannah but Gerard instead dragged me to the other couch and forced us both down.

"Frank was getting jealous," He simply stated at Hannah and Amber who were as confused at his actions as I was. He ignored our inquisitive looks and instead pulled me down to the sofa so that we were both lying down. He had placed his body so that it was behind my own so we were almost spooning in a way, despite that being something he had not done before. He dragged the throw from behind him over our bodies and fully relaxed into me. The fire inside of me in that moment only contrasted to the soft thrill I had felt with Hannah. How could I have been so stupid to think that anybody else's attention could compare to this? My heart hammered wildly against my chest as he nuzzled his nose into the crook on my neck once everybody's eyes had retreated back to the shit film we were watching. I knew I had to be making things up for my head, but it almost felt as if he pressed his lips chastely to the skin under my ear, that same spot that had been left tender ever since my dream of him sucking on it. I shivered under his touch and involuntarily moved back into his warm body further. 

"That's my boy," he said again, barely above a whisper, causing my socked toes to curl in delight against his own. He reached over with the hand that was not supporting his head and joined it to my own that had been splayed across my stomach, under my polo, and grabbed it loosely. With our now joined palms, he traced small circles just below my navel with his thumb leaving electricity under his touch. 

"You two just have the cutest friendship!" Amber smiled completely unaware at the fact that her boyfriend was holding my fucking hand and tracing patterns dangerously close to my crotch. Gerard did not respond but instead smiled into the crook of my neck causing his hot breath to send shivers right down my spine. We stayed like that for a while, and I could not seem to control my actions. With every touch of his thumb, I seemed to edge back into him more trying to encourage his advances. I knew not to get ahead of myself, but with every swirl on my stomach, he seemed to go down further to the point he was now dancing our joined fingers across my protruding hip bones. That wasn't it though, because next, he dipped his fingers under the waistband of my jeans slightly, causing my breathing to hitch and my mind to wander. As I felt pressure from his fingertips now below my waistband I couldn't help the natural reaction from my body. I willed for the burning in my groin to fuck off but, with his unmoving touch, it was inevitable. I had gotten awkward boners around him before which I'd always managed to cover up but I don't think with his hand so close to my dick that it was going to quite work that way. 

"I- erh," I shot away from him before he could feel how turned on I was, alarming him almost at the suddenness to my movements. He looked hazy, as if he had almost been asleep and not been aware of the torment he was causing me. That's all it was to him, an unconscious act of affection the meant nothing. "I gotta pee."

——

I went to the bathroom and splashed cold water on my face until I had calmed down enough to go back into the living room again. The worst thing about being so inexperienced and so in love was that he only had to shoot me a slightly suggestive look and my mind would automatically run rings around itself thinking of what it would be like to have him look at me like that in moments of weakness. He'd been blowing so hot and cold all evening that I was truly lost. I had been thrown into the middle of nowhere, in the dark, without even a torch because every time I tried to text James about it, he would demand I stopped being rude and got off my phone. 

"Oh, where's Gerard?" I asked a little dumbstruck when I came back into the dark living room to see just Hannah sat on her own. 

"Well, they didn't exactly say where they were going but I think him taking her to his room was enough of a cue for me to leave." She looked a little mad at being ditched. I wished that I could have been mad, it was easier than being heartbroken at the thought of him being downstairs with somebody else. I could only pray in some kind of twisted way that it was being so close to me that had caused a subliminal urgency to touch somebody. I kicked myself for leaving. If I had not ran off at the first sign of trouble he may still have been holding me. 

"You're leaving?" I frowned.

"Yeah, I called a cab it's 2 minutes away." She confirmed. It was selfish of me, but I felt sad that she was going. Although she was not who I wanted to be spending time with, I liked the way she distracted me from my thoughts enough to be normal. She took my silence as me thinking this was a rejection from her and quickly added, "It wasn't anything you did, Frank, I just can't be bothered to sit here why they fuck yet again, but I had a really nice time with you."

"You did?"

"Yes! Maybe I could... see you again at school or something." She said apprehensively. Although I had no intention of being with her in _that_ way, I knew it had pushed her confidence to say that so like an idiot I agreed."Great, I'll see you soon then." She got onto the tips of her toes so we were more of a similar height and pecked my lips before leaving me standing there on my own whilst the love of my life was with somebody else downstairs.I could have gone home, but I couldn't get my feet to move. I even thought about going upstairs and annoying Mikey and Pete who I could hear were playing video games, but that was just weird and sad. My only choice was to sit at his dining room table with one of his fathers disgustingly bitter beers trying to block out the noise of the bed slamming against the wall from downstairs. He had never made it this obvious that he was having sex before, he at least tried to have some dignity most of the time, especially with his fucking brother in the house. It wasn't like that tonight though, although his moans were muffled I could still make out the curse words and cries that were escaping his lips. I might have been an uneducated virgin, but even I knew that sex couldn't have been that good that he had to make that much racket. Instead, I lost myself once again in my imagination. I let my mind wander onto scenarios of what I wanted to happen earlier instead of me running out. In my head, he would have known what I wanted and sent Amber and Hannah home. He would have then have kissed me more desperately than before and then who fucking knows? Maybe it would have been me down there getting to see him so weak, not some bitchy, arrogant girl who did not deserve to know him like that. As the clock struck quarter past 12, I eventually heard his bounding feet run up the stairs.

"Hey!" He grinned sheepishly at me, his hair even more ruffled than before. He had not got a shirt on only alluding me to his bare chest which was now covered in scratch marks which were obviously caused from a set of tacky over-long acrylic nails. His pyjamas pants clung loosely to his hips alerting me to the trail of dark hair leading from his navel, reminding me of what he had been doing to me earlier in the night. Gerard was not exactly the definition of masculine, his skin was pale and apart from the trail to his pubic bone, his chest was smooth. I ached to drag my teeth across his bare skin like Amber had clearly been doing but life was cruel and that was not going to happen. "Where's Hannah?"

"She left, I wished I had too because that was fucking horrendous, Gerard!" I snapped at him, my hurt coming out as anger. He was used to his friends supporting his slutish actions, not reprimanding them but then again, his other friends weren't in love with him. 

"No one forced you to stay," He shrugged as I got up from the chair I had been sat in and instead went to stand by the window, looking out at the same sky that had comforted me earlier. "You're just self-destructive enough to put yourself through that aren't you?"

"What the fuck do you mean?" I panicked.

"Did it make you uncomfortable hearing me fuck her, Frank?" He approached me quickly, pinning my hands by my sides causing me to gulp. It appeared he was still acting weird, and I wasn't sure whether I liked it or not.

"Course it did, I don't want to hear anybody fuck someone!"

"Why are you scared of sex? It's fucking brilliant!" He laughed in my face as if he was delirious "having somebody trust you like that! You're missing out."

"Well, I'm glad you've found something to fill the emptiness inside of your chest but I think I'm going to wait for a girl who at least has some brain activity," I responded bitterly in his face.

"I knew it! I fucking knew you didn't like Amber! What the fuck is your problem?" 

"I'm just sick of you ditching me for girls all the time. When will I be good enough for you, Gerard?" I screamed in his face, not liking the darkness the conversation was now adopting. 

"If you want to have obsessive attention from somebody then fuck off back to your little soccer friend I'm sure he'd be more than glad to give it to you!"

"Why are you so fucking jealous of James?" I tried to rip my arms from his grip but to no avail, he had his stubby nails so tightly in me that he was leaving little crescent-shaped dents in my skin. "Because- because," He stuttered before giving up "no reason, I'm sorry, bug."

 "Huh?" I asked in disappointment. I had always assumed Gerard to have been an open book to me because I thought that he told me everything. It appeared I was not the only one who knew to talk in riddles though because he was holding something back and showing no signs of giving it up. 

"I'm really sorry," He let my arms go and instead pulled me into another chaste hug. Although he was bigger than me and more dominant, I felt as if I was comforting a child with the way he clung to my smaller frame. "I don't know why you stick around, I'm awful to you."

"Because I love you," I said bluntly, only wishing I could describe how much I truly meant that statement. 

"I love you too, bug. I fucking love you so much it hurts." He replied as I rocked him back into the happiness I couldn't bear to see him be without.


	20. I don't want to participate in your game of manipulation

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> This chapter is boring and I'm sorry I just needed to set the scene a bit for the next few chapters. It's about to get a lot more serious I promise!

Just like clockwork, Gerard walked into the hall on our mid-morning break on the Monday after our weird weekend. I had slept over in the spare room as he had Amber in his bed, and we’d suffered an awkward coffee together on Sunday morning until I’d finally gotten the excuse to leave when Nathan messaged me to meet them at the park. Although he had messaged me non stop on Sunday about the latest conspiracy theories he’d been researching, I still feared that he was going to ignore me again. He’d walked in, fingers loosely intertwined with Amber's, who was conducting her annoying habit of incessantly fixing his already perfect hair despite the fact he didn’t like affections like that in public. I knew that, but how could she? She’d known him for 5 minutes. Anyway, I’d relaxed into my seat when he stuck his tongue out at me, indicating to me today was not one of those days when he’d forget I existed.

“So, I was thinking after the big game on Saturday that we could all meet at Kenny’s for a few beers or something,” James announced, anticipating our win for the finals, causing Kenny to visibly squirm at the thought of more alcohol. Bless him, after last time he hadn’t been able to even smell anything alcoholic, including the ethanol we’d used in our biology practical which had caused him to run to the bathroom to vomit.

“A Capri sun for Kenny,” I smirked, “and I guess as it’s the finals I could stretch and treat you boys to something a little stronger than that.”

“Wow, thanks,” Matt laughed “you’re really too kind some times, Franks.”

“I am the captain and I’m the one that gets it in the ass when you lot are out of shape!” I joined in the banter, enjoying the happiness that I was feeling. Okay, I was a little distraught that Gerard had apparently found the love of his life, but soccer was always enough to distract me enough to have a little bit of a good time at least.

“Who gets what in the ass?” An unusually sweet voice came from behind me. I snapped my neck around in anticipation to see Hannah stood nervously behind my chair.

“Oh hey! Erm, that was nothing.” I blushed attempting to ignore the confused glances of my friends. I had been very quiet to everyone except James about my first ever date, I mean I didn’t want them to get ahead of themselves. Hannah had text me a few times the day before but I’d quickly disguised it when we had been at the park and had claimed it to be Gerard, to which they quickly lost interest.

“Who’s your friend, Franks?” Matt said cockily, eyeing Hannah up, much to my annoyance. It wasn’t like I felt as if I had some claim on her, but I just didn’t want her to ever think we were like Gerard’s friends. I felt as a whole, we respected women, well most of us did.

“I’m Hannah,” she nodded shyly “Anyway,” she turned away from Matt’s prowling eyes and instead crouched down on the floor next to my seat “I was just wondering if you wanted to go and see a movie on Saturday?”

“He can’t,” James said a little shorter than he usually would act with people he did not know. James and I were similar in that way, we always enjoyed being sociable. Except now, he wasn’t exactly being welcoming to the apprehensive, yet beautiful girl by my side.

“Oh,” Hannah responded, sounding a little disheartened, “how come?”

“It’s this really important game on Saturday evening, I mean you can come if you want but it’ll be cold and not really your thing so you don’t have to,” I stuttered out awkwardly, not really knowing the direction of the conversation myself.

“Yeah, I’d love to,” She beamed at me, her perfectly glossed smile making me feel at least a little appreciated.

“BOO!” A booming voice came from behind me as I felt a sharp push on my shoulders.

“Gerard?” I responded a little surprised to see him stood towering over me, not even remotely caring that Joe was watching him like a hawk would watch a baby mouse.

“Wow, you could act a little happier to see me, bug,” He rolled his eyes as if talking to me in school was a usual thing for him. Gerard and I usually saved our conversations for private times just because it was easier that way. It meant that his friends did not ridicule him for talking to a soccer-obsessed freak like me, and mine did not have more of a reason to dislike him. That seemed to not bother him today though because he was acting as if our table was his usual hang out spot.

“I’m happy, I just-“

“What are you talking about?” He spoke over me suddenly.

“Soccer,” James glared at him “so you might as well just leave.”

“Shit!” Gerard grinned at me, completely ignoring James’ rude comment “it’s your final, isn’t it?”

“Oh, are you going to remember to show up this time?” Matt smirked making me regret ever confessing my disappointment about his last no-show. Matt did not hate Gerard in the same way James did, he just lived to wind him up. It appeared today though, that Gerard was not nibbling at Matt’s agitations.

“Of course,” He frowned.

“Hannah’s coming too!” I grinned, almost forgetting the reason why I had entertained the concept of a date in the first place. I was growing less concerned that Gerard had seen that cryptic text from James on Saturday because he seemed more attached to me than ever. It was almost as if things were like how they used to be, just how I liked them.

“Oh… great.” Gerard replied a little flatly as if he wasn’t even happy about the fact I was entertaining the date that he’d set up in the first place “I’ll bring Ambs too.” He added quickly regaining himself. I don’t think anybody else noticed, but then again, nobody knew him quite as well as I did.

“That sounds great! Maybe we could do something after as well?” Hannah asked hopefully.

“Yeah!” I said quickly, grabbing desperately to any opportunity that meant spending more time with Gerard, “You should come to Kenny’s! That’s okay with you, right, Ken?” I asked desperately at my friend who was sat in awe of Hannah. I felt bad for Kenny, with Matt and Harry’s encouragement he always tried so hard to get girls to like him, it was yet to work though. Kenny needed to stop going for the same girls that Gerard would, because, people like Amber would walk right over him.

“Yes,” Kenny replied, not being able to drag his eyes away from the pretty girl “you can come. Oh, and Gerard you can come too but don’t bring Joe, yeah?” He shuddered, preempting the disaster that was Joe Delo.

“Nah, I mean we don’t have to mention any of this to Delo really, do we?” Gerard almost begged, chewing nervously on his thumb again. Although it hurt that he wanted to keep me a secret, I was no bigger of a fan for Joe’s interference so was ultimately happy to keep the secret too.

“Great, I can’t wait!” I grinned up at my best friend, enjoying his support for a game he hated.

“Gerard!” Amber snapped from his usual table, two over from my own “Come and help me convince Delo that sex is just better with the lights on!”

She did not seem to care that all the boys were ogling her and her openness to sex, almost as if she was used to it. Of course, she was used to it though, she was confident and stunning, exactly Gerard’s type of girl. I knew that it had been a forced conversation anyway, Joe just didn’t want Gerard to be stood with us. From the evil look in his beady eyes, I knew my best friend was going to suffer later and I couldn’t help but feel bad. If I were stronger, I would have stayed away from him for his own sake.

———

“I just don’t understand it!” Matt whined at lunchtime “how did you get her, Frank?”

After our morning break, I had an hour of my sports lessons which I had used to just enjoy the silence. I knew that it couldn’t last though because it was definitely out of character for me to speak to a girl so I knew my friends would not drop it.

“I already told you!” I whined, “She’s Gerard’s girlfriend's friend!”

“Wait, Gerard’s what?” Harry said in his monotonous voice despite his surprise.

“Girlfriend,” I replied bluntly.

“So, he’s fucking some girl and you’re fucking her best mate to keep her occupied, yes?” Nathan smirked at me.

“I didn’t fuck anybody!” I blushed. I don’t even know why I was embarrassed talking about it, because it wasn’t as if my friends were. Harry, Matt and Nathan all had experience with girls whilst me, James and Kenny still awkwardly approached them. I didn’t really understand why James was grouped with me and Kenny. I mean I was in love with an actual male and Kenny was just underdeveloped, but James had everything. He always stated that he just wasn’t ready and I hadn’t wanted to push him because I knew just how aggravating that could be.

“I don’t believe you went on a double date with Gerard, king of the sluts, and didn’t get laid!” Matt rolled his eyes dramatically as if everything in the world revolved around sex. I didn’t even know how to get out of the conversation because James was the only one who knew why I did not want the night to escalate with Hannah. “I mean she’s hot, plus for some weird reason she seems infatuated with your short arse!”

“Hey!” I whined, “Unlike you Matt, I’m not going to fuck somebody I’ve just met, that’s gross!”

“So, you’re telling me nothing happened?” Nathan raised an eyebrow, become more drawn into the gossip that was building up.

“Eh-“ I shrugged, my blush making it impossible to lie.

“I knew it! I fucking knew it!” Matt clapped his hands together in some weird sort of glee. Sometimes, he could be worse than Gerard for asking why I was still a virgin even though I was only seventeen.

“It was just a kiss!” I protested.

“You fucking kissed her?” James spat out from the table.

“Yeah, but it wasn’t like that-“ I tried to argue but it was futile. My friends had grabbed on to the one minor event that had happened and ran away with it. As far as they were aware, I had never really kissed anyone before and I was not about to disclose my Friday night lesson with Gerard.

“You’re a fucking liar!” James snapped at me as if he was hurt I didn’t tell him. I knew he was going to be confused, but I didn’t know why he was talking to me like shit.

“James knew?” Matt asked, stirring the pot even more “I can’t believe you told James you have a girlfriend and not me! I’m the fucking love wizard of this friendship group!”

“ _Love wizard_?” Harry spluttered, breaking the tension before it could truly set in “That’s something I would have expected Kenny to say.”

“Don’t group me in with that weirdo!” Kenny whined, “Frank, has she got any friends?” He added eagerly at the prospect of finally receiving female attention.

“I don’t know! I hardly even know her!”

“Well, put yourself to use and get to know her, Frank, then maybe we might not have a group full of virgins!” Matt complained, almost embarrassed at our combined inexperience.

———-

“Don’t be mad at me,” I whined at James as we walked out of school towards Matt’s house.

“I’m not mad,” he folded his arms, completely contradicting his words. He most definitely was pissed at me.

“You so are,  _JimJam_!”

“Don’t call me that!” He grumbled, “you don’t get to call me that because you kissed a girl and didn’t bother to tell me.”

“I’m sorry!”

“I don’t understand you because one minute you’re kissing Gerard then next you’re kissing that stupid bitch-“

“Don’t call her that! And anyway, I don’t really understand it myself, so how can I explain it?”

“You must fucking know how you feel!” He seemed frustrated, almost as if it were him who was in emotional turmoil.

“Well, she just kissed me and I felt bad so I didn’t push her away,” I guiltily admitted.

“You can’t just lead her on, Frank. If you’re gay you need to-“

“I’m not gay! I think, I mean I’m not anything-“ I protested not really knowing what to say.

“Who’s not gay?” Kenny ran behind us and I begged with my eyes at James for him not to say anything that may allude suspicions.

“You, Kenny. You’re such a womaniser,” James rolled his eyes at our friend but pushed me in jest to show he was not truly mad. Well, he wasn’t mad until the black Audi pulled next to us and the driver's side tinted window rolled down.

“Frank, are you not coming?” Gerard raised an eyebrow as if we had plans. He did drive me home a lot, but he already knew I was going to Matt’s house because I’d told him in Psychology. As much as I wanted to crawl into his car like the bitch I was, I don’t think James could handle it as well as the fact Amber was sat next to him, once again running her overlong fake nails through his hair.

“Where?” I frowned.

“To mine! I thought we could-“

“No, G,” I replied bluntly enjoying the power. I think I was only so strong because I physically could not stand to watch her all over the love of my life, again.

“Oh,” he replied awkwardly, not used to rejections from the one who adored him the most “okay.”

“I’ll be home at 8ish,” I crouched down and said in a hushed tone just so James could not irritate me about it later. “I dunno we could go for a drive.”

“Great!” He grinned at me, making my heart hammer. “Pick you up later, _ugly_!”

With that, his engine roared to life and he sped off down the road.

“See, James, I could have just gotten a lift home but I didn’t because you’re my number one!” I tossed my arm around his shoulder, making him smile.

“Maybe it’s secretly me you’re helplessly in love with after all!” He faked swooned in my arms, taking the piss of how my demeanour had just changed in front of Gerard.

“Fortunately for you, James, I have only been weirdly in love with one person in my whole entire life.” I sighed heavily.

“Hah! Yeah!” He said quickly, probably not wanting to upset me. 


	21. Misery never goes out of style

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Again, this is short because the next one is going to be long!! I promise the shit storm is going to hit soon :)

Things between Gerard and I were better than ever. We’d gone on numerous drives together, laughing hysterically at our memories and how our lives had changed. Despite my feelings, there was no one in the world I would have rather have been with because nobody shared the history we did. I loved James with my whole heart but he didn’t know about that time that me and Gerard thought it would be a good idea to give ourselves haircuts with my father's beard trimmer with attempts of giving ourselves Mohawks. Obviously, we’d ended up looking butchered and grounded once our moms had finally stopped laughing at us, but that didn’t matter because we’d done it together. Gerard had been so kind to me recently, he’d even showed up to my soccer practice on Wednesday, something he would never usually do, particularly in the cruel fall weather. He said that he wanted to come though because it was important to me and the last one before our final on Saturday. It would have been perfect if not for the fact that Amber and Hannah had come with him. They didn’t look like they were enjoying it, they were both huddled under thick winter coats trying to avoid their inappropriate footwear from getting destroyed in the mud-soaked fields.

“Fucking yes, boys!” I jumped around ecstatically as I slammed the ball into the opposition's goal for the third time of the game before Grimshaw finally blew his whistle to signal the end of practice. It was only a mock game, preparing us for Saturday but it still meant a lot that I was able to score. I knew the team on Saturday were going to be a lot tougher than the practice one but with my new found happiness, I felt as if I could take on the world. My emotions had been so up and down that I truly did not like getting attached to the joyous times because I knew an even bigger downfall was around the corner. It was just hard to do that though because the way he was shouting my name like a fucking soccer mom on the sidelines made me forget every wrong he had ever done me.

“Well done!” Hannah ran over to me once coach Grimshaw had stopped praising me. Before I could stop her, she launched herself at me and pressed her lips to mine. Without the privacy of Gerard’s kitchen, I suddenly felt exposed. I almost froze under her touch as she moved her mouth against my own, feeling everybody would know the phoney that I was. It was strange, I’d always suffered from attachment issues to anybody who tried to turn our friendships into anything more but I thought I was finally over that. It had been a really long time since a girl had bothered to try and get to know me so I thought as I had been feeling okay with Hannah, that I was cured. I wasn’t though. I felt with that kiss that she had forced me into a noose and the knot was getting tighter and tighter, slowly suffocating me. I was grateful when Gerard came over and forced us apart with his comment.

“ _Gross_ ,” he rolled his eyes hypocritically because he had spent the whole of the half time making out with her best friend on a bench, much to Grimshaw’s annoyance. Everyone was confused as to why Gerard was there, but I’d just tried to ignore the inquisitive eyes. Hannah pulled back, looking sheepish, just filling me with guilt. I didn’t know why, but I felt a weird urge to get far away from her. Without even knowing it, she was causing me to be trapped and I felt uneasy. People shouldn’t get attached to me, I was worse than Gerard for letting them down. I regretted every moment that I’d entertained the two of us, because clearly with the gleam in her eye she did not think it was harmless like I had. Gerard was so casual about relationships that I had learnt to think that every girl was like that. Hannah wasn’t though, she was trying to link our hands together despite the questioning looks of all of my friends.

“Shut up, G.” I blushed, trying to untangle my hand from Hannah’s in a subtle way to no prevail.

“Kenny!” He yelled at my friend, who responded by shooting a nervous glance upwards at him “that was fucking so good, man!”

“Erm,” I said in absolute bewilderment. Gerard was never nice to Kenny, and I think it had left him just as shocked as it had left me.

“T-t thanks, Gerard!” Kenny beamed at him as if he’d just been offered a compliment from David fucking Beckham or something.

“I’m so excited for Saturday!” Gerard said with no hint of sarcasm in his voice.

“Are you feeling okay?” I giggled, finally ripping my hand from Hannah’s by mockingly feeling Gerard's forehead. Before I could, he grabbed both of my hands and wrapped his own fingers around my own. I was confused at the action, but I wasn’t about to stop it.

“I’m proud of you, so fucking proud!” He raised our joined palms like a game of mercy, without the malice.

“Gerard!” Amber whined from behind him “I’m fucking cold, can you stop being gay for like two seconds please?”

“Yeah, babe. I’ll take you home,” he sighed. If I did not know better, I would have thought that he actually wanted to stay with me in the freezing cold park. “I’ll pick you up later, Frankie, I owe you a coffee.”

He did not owe me any more coffee, he’d bought me four now without me returning the favour but every time we got to the drive-thru, he refused to let me pay.

“Hey,” Kenny said once Gerard had left, not being able to get over the fact that he had given him a compliment. “Why do you let him call you Frankie?”

I mean I could understand his confusion, if anybody but my mother or Gerard called me that name I bitched like a child but I think it was because I wanted to keep it special. To me, that nickname was reserved for those who knew me the most in the world.

“Because, Ken, he’s not weirdly in love with you,” Matt rolled his eyes at me, again. If he rolled his eyes anymore, then they might roll all the way out of his fucking stupid head. I loved Matt, but he knew how to get into my head without really knowing a thing about my secrets.

“Shut the fuck up!” I protested, trying to quickly change the subject.

——

Despite Matts unnerving comment, I was on a cloud of happiness I was not ready to come down from. It seemed like I’d finally achieved the cohesion between my two lives that I had been trying to get for years now. All my friends but James had become accustomed to the fact that Gerard kept stopping by our table and hanging around a little more than usual, and for once they seemed to get on. Kenny especially had an admiration for Gerard, clinging on to every word he said, he was getting worse than me. I couldn’t complain though, I had not felt this excited in a while. Whilst my heart still whimpered in the day at the sight of him with Amber, he always made up for it in the night when he came and picked me up and we’d drive around until we were crying with laughter.

“Frankie! The door!” My mom called up the stairs as I lay in bed on Friday night. Gerard had told me that he had to sort out some stuff with Dean so he couldn’t be there straight away but he’d promised me he would not be missing another Friday night and that he would be around to pick me up as soon as he was done. I’d waited eagerly all night for him until the grey sky had turned black, not being able to pay real attention to the reruns of shitty shows I had on in the background. I couldn’t have him in the way I wanted, but I could at least think about it. Like the teenage girl I apparently was, I ran through every possible scenario in my head. My personal favourite though, is when he’d just grab me against his car and press his lips to my own. Whenever I thought about it, I couldn’t help but press my finger tenderly to my lips, almost anticipating his touch. The reality was obviously very different though, whenever he pushed me into his car, it was usually in fits of play fighting rather than throws of passion. It was almost as if our kiss never happened to him, he was completely able to ignore the fact that for one brief moment in our friendship he had let out an escaped whimper into my mouth. I only wish that I could have done the same because anytime he fucking breathed a little heavier than usual, it’s all I could think about.

I ran downstairs, grabbing my coat on the way to save time so that I could spend as much alone time with Gerard as humanly possible. The passing of time went so quickly when I was in his company that I clung to even the mere seconds of it.

“It’s a girl,” my mom whispered a little too loudly causing me to freeze. My mother was shocked, sure, I mean she wasn’t used to girls coming to the house, but she wasn’t as shocked as me. There, at the door, stood Hannah. I suddenly felt that weird squeezing feeling in my chest again, as if the walls around me were closing in.

“How did you know where I lived?” I frowned at her, not being able to stop the rude comment from spilling from my lips. I felt bad, I’d spent the past two days trying to avoid her and had mostly succeeded. It had gotten so bad that I’d even spent my lunchtimes in the music department claiming I had work to finish when, in fact, I had completed it months ago.

“Gerard told me,” she nodded coldly, obviously sensing my disappointment to see her.

“Frank?” My mom said from behind me, making me wished she’s stayed even later at the office tonight. She was constantly reminding me of my inexperience compared to Gerard’s, always plaguing me with questions about when I was going to find a nice girl to settle down with.

“Erm, sorry, this is my erm friend, Hannah,” I mumbled to the floor, not being able to meet her eyes.

“Hi,” my mom said gingerly, sensing the awkwardness between us “you guys want anything? I can make you a snack or-“

“No!” I said quickly, “I’m going to walk to the shop, I’ll be back soon.”

“Okay, sweetie.” She said quickly

“If G comes over, tell him I’ll be back soon, okay?” I called to my mother as I left, ushering Hannah out of my door with me.

“Gerard?” Hannah frowned “I think you’ve got a better chance of seeing the Loch Ness monster tonight.”

“Huh?” I asked her as we began to walk down my path, a little bit too much distance between our frames for it to not be awkward.

“He’s fucked, Frank. I just came from Ed’s and he’s been snorting coke since we finished school.”

“Oh,” I replied bluntly, not being able to hide my disappointment. He’d promised me and like an idiot, I’d been sat up awaiting him to fulfil it.

“Anyway, I don’t wanna talk about Gerard, I came to see you!” She said hopefully as if I was the answer to all her prayers. Why could she not see that I was no better than my calamity of a best friend? I felt awful, I didn’t know how Gerard hurt people for fun. If the feeling in my chest was not becoming so excruciating then I think I would have gone along with the facade of a date just so I did not upset her. The week before, I had laid awake praying to hurt somebody just to know what it felt like to have that power, but it had taught me to be careful what I wished for. I was hurting someone now, and I had never felt worse.

“Frank!” Hannah pleaded with me when I had mumbled out a response to her for the fifth time on our short walk “you keep clamming up on me!”

She was not wrong. We had barely made it off my street before I felt my legs freeze underneath me, resulting in me standing there like a mannequin. I had gotten so used to the happiness, that the slight rejection had left me broken and bruised. Gerard ditching me for his main passion of cocaine was not an unusual thing, in fact, it used to happen almost every week. Despite all of this though, it hurt now more than ever. It just reiterated to me that I meant nothing to him whenever drugs were involved. I was only human, I could not change the neurotransmitters in his damaged head quite like that stupid fucking white powder could.

“Frank?” Hannah asked desperately, staring at my pathetically waiting self.

“I’m not a good person, Hannah,” I mumbled causing her once kind face to cloud over.

“Wh-what?”

“I don’t know why you think I can save you, I can’t fucking save myself and it’s just too much!”

“I’m too much?” She frowned. I had never had to break away from someone like this before, and it was fucking difficult and her kicked puppy expression was not making it any easier.

“No, I just-“

“God, I’m so fucking stupid!” She laughed cruelly at me, “I mean your Gerard’s best friend, of course, you’re not different to him!”

“I am!” I tried to argue, but it was futile, I really was no better than him. I knew that I had no intentions of being with this girl, so why the fuck had I lead her on?

“No, you’re not!” She yelled at me as if she was scorning a child “who was I kidding? I left that shitty party where Amber had just ditched me to fuck her coked-up boyfriend and I thought coming to you was going to make it all go away!”

“I didn’t mean to-“

“Nah, fuck you, Frank. I can’t believe that everyone thinks that Gerard is the fuck boy when it’s you!”

With that, she spun on her heel in the opposite direction, leaving me stood there. I blinked aimlessly as her frame got further away but made no attempts to stop her. Her harsh words should have stung me, but all of that was overpowered by the immense sense of relief I felt. It could have been worse, knowing how awkward I was around girls, she could have ended up my actual girlfriend and things could have been messier. I was a cruel piece of shit, but at least I had tried not to sadistically lead her on anymore as I knew Gerard would have encouraged me to do. His favourite phrase was to say that if girls were stupid enough to get played, then it was their fault. I hated it but I knew he only said it from a place of past hurt, and for that, I didn’t think that I could truly blame him. If people had mocked me as they had him, I probably would have had a vengeance wish on humankind too.

 

I felt anger at the fact that Gerard had forgotten about me once again more than anything until I felt my phone vibrate in my hand.

**\- I gpot caught up @ Dean’S. See u tomorriws xox**

I mean despite the grammatical incorrectness and the fact he was obviously high, at least he was thinking of me. 


	22. Hell is round the corner (PART 1)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Fucking finally!!!!! Sorry this took so long but I kept being dragged out and I don't exactly share this with my friends hahahaha
> 
> Anyway, I hope you enjoy it. I wrote it in two parts just so it's not too long 
> 
> ALSO, sorry for any football inaccuracies I actually can't stand the sport haha

This game meant everything to me, but I awoke feeling less than excited. I had been awaiting this day for months now, dragging my tired body through the tournament until we'd made it to the finals. It really did matter as well, not only was this one of my final challenges with the team with whom I'd grown up with, but it also meant that Grimshaw was going to get a generous funding boost he'd needed for a while now. I respected Grimshaw, despite the fact that he had a full-time job, he dedicated every free hour he could into his teams so he really deserved the prize money more than the over commercialised coach of the other team. The terrain of our practice ground was terrible but there were no resources to fix it, meaning it was just going to get worse. I could have just left it, I mean I was going to university where the pitches were borderline professional but after all Grimshaw had done for me, I just wanted to at least try for him. That's why I felt guilty that I once again felt the harrowing numbness in me.

"Son, you better at least force a smile for Sammy today, he's depending on you!" My father said slapping his newspaper down next to me where I had been sat cradling my usual morning cappuccino. The only person not related to him that did not refer to Coach Grimshaw as his surname was my father who still affectionately referred to him the same way he had when they were children. I wouldn't only be letting Grimshaw down if I failed to perform today, but also my dad. My dad who had driven me to practice every single morning when I had been too young to make it there myself, the one who watched all my games no matter how small and mainly, the one who had pushed me to join the team in the first place.

"I am excited dad, I'm just nervous," I mean it wasn't a lie, I was terrified of letting everybody down. Sure, we were a team, but being the captain did not come without its pressures.

"Are you okay, baby?" My mother came rushing in "Did that girl upset you?"

"What girl?" My father raised his eyebrow, thinking maybe I was finally catching up with my friends. He would never say it, but I think sometimes my dad wished that I was more like Gerard so that I could at least join in their conversations about women they would ogle on the TV.

"She's my friend!" I protested, well she _was_ my friend I guess. "She didn't upset me!"

"Then why did she come over so late? I didn't know that you had a girl-" My mom began, sticking her nose in where it was most definitely not wanted. I had grown out of that 14-year-old approach to life of telling my mother to butt out of my business, but it didn't mean that she didn't sometimes irritate me with her persistence to know everything.

"Because, I said I'd go to the shop with her, that's all!"

"I think she likes you, Frankie!" My mom cooed wrapping her arms tightly around me and placing lipstick kisses on my cheek.

"Get off!" I scrubbed furiously at the red stains that I knew were going to be left there "she's not my fucking girlfriend!"

"Frank!" My father boomed, only annoying me further. "You might swear on the pitch, but you do not speak to your mother in that manner!"

"Yeah, yeah, I'm sorry," I discreetly rolled my eyes when they weren't looking, just silently begging to be left alone with my coffee.

"It's okay, baby," My mom grinned once again "you're just nervous for your big day!"

———

My wish to be left alone appeared to be futile and my mother was faffing around me all fucking day. The only time I had been left to my own devices was when I was showering and even then, she had cut it short by hammering on the door.

"What?" I snapped at her bluntly as I rushed out of the bathroom with only a towel around my waist. There in front of me stood Bethany and Gerard, and I suddenly felt exposed with my naked chest. I saw Gerard try and disguise his smirk behind his zipped up collar, but I could tell he was amused at my suffering from the glint in his eyes.

"Beth came over to wish you luck!" My mom clapped her manicured hands gleefully as she shared the excitement with her best friend.

"Thank you," I blushed, trying to escape to my room as quickly as I could.

"How are you feeling about the game, Frank? Gerard says you're doing really well!" Bethany beamed at me as if I wasn't stood with only a towel protecting my modesty.

"Erh, okay," I mumbled "can I just-" I attempted to get past Gerard, who was purposely stood awkwardly to the foot of the attic stairs to my bedroom.

"Oh, sorry am I in your way?" He flashed me a smug look, content with my awkwardness.

"Yes!" I whined.

"Okay, well come on May, let's go get a coffee downstairs and let the boy change!" Beth linked my mother's arm as they walked down the stairs together already lost in a phatic discussion.

"Prick," I grunted at Gerard, squeezing past his body that still had not moved from the steps leading up to my room.

"Oh come on, Frankie," He laughed at me. I span around to glare at him, but only caught him glancing at my naked torso. He was probably trying to amuse himself, knowing how awkward I had become in my own skin recently. As I'd grown older, I'd become more reserved as others around me became more open and now I was more ashamed of my body than ever. The thought of anybody seeing my body was terrifying and I think if it were not for the fact that Gerard had already seen it many times, I would have hidden it even more. It was weird, I did not even despise the sight of my frame like Gerard did with his own, I just did not like people staring at it. It was like the more they stared, the more aware I was that nobody had truly seen me like that.

"Prick!" I said again, now scowling at him as he grabbed desperately at my hand. I don't think he meant to, but with the lack of support my towel now had, it fell awkwardly on my hips. I prayed that he had not noticed but he gingerly dropped my hands so I could resume my grip on the scratchy blue towel.

"You got high last night," I continued to try and drag the conversation away from the fact he'd just nearly seen more of me than he had for years. Me and Gerard had been babies around each other, of course, we had shared baths and stuff but as soon as I had started school, we'd both become more reserved. I intended to keep it that way, it made things less awkward. "You said you were going to pick me up but you got fucked up instead!" I couldn't help the passion that was escaping my voice. He had hurt me last night and I was not doing a very good job of hiding it.

"I'm sorry! Amber just had some of Dean's new shit and I was jealous-"

"It's okay," I mumbled, even though it wasn't.

"How do you even know I was high?" He frowned, closing my bedroom door behind us once we had made it up the stairs.

"Just a guess," I busied myself with grabbing my kit out of my closet just to avoid his intrusive gaze. I didn't really feel like explaining to Gerard why Hannah and I had fallen apart before we had really begun, not yet anyway.

"Fuck's sake!" He whined coming over to and spinning my body to face his. The placement of my desk meant that I was pressed awkwardly against it just to get some distance between our bodies. I did not want my dick to betray me again as it had on his sofa so I tried to push him away to no prevail.

"Frank," he said tenderly, reaching to move a stray hair that had fallen in my face with the hastiness of my previous actions.

"Yes?" I squeaked, my breath getting caught in my throat with his actions. To him, it was nothing because he did not have feelings for me. To me though, it was everything. With the isolation I had encountered for seventeen years, I craved affection. I did not understand how my body needed something so badly that it was yet to experience. I had no fucking pragmatical knowledge on what it was like to have his tender hands run over my body, but I could still feel the phantom touch of his fingertips.

"I missed you last night, I was going to come and see you but Amber forced me to go to bed," he still did not move his hand which had repeatedly begun stroking the hair that framed my face despite it now being perfectly placed. I did not understand how an action that irritated me so much when Amber did it to him, could feel so fucking good. Maybe that's why she did it, for the same butterflies that I was currently feeling in the pit of my stomach.

"Mmhmm," I barely responded, unable to drag my mind away from the thought of his touch long enough to string a coherent sentence together.

"Did you miss me, bug?" He said, almost darkly. Again, he flickered his analytical eyes over my face as if he was searching for something.

"So what if I did?" I dared to reply, trying to ignore my body's ache to be touched by him.

"I wanted you to miss me. I wanted you to fucking think about me," he fastidiously ran his thumb against my trembling lip, wiping away a water droplet that had fallen there from the expelled moisture from my hair.

"I think about you all the time," I screwed my eyes shut, the fuzziness in my head causing me to make stupid, exposing comments.

"I think about you," he said slowly, gazing down at where his thumb was resting on my bottom lip. "When I'm with her, I think about you"

"What?" I gasped out, barely above a whisper. I hated when he was cryptic like this, what he was saying could have meant anything in the world and I was not prepared to make an idiot out of myself. People don't just decide they want their best friend after seventeen years, that's not how life worked.

"Frank!" My mother knocked on my door with three harsh taps causing Gerard to jump away from me as if I had become burning hot under his touch. I loved my mom more than anything, but I don't think I had ever been more frustrated in my life.

"What?" I huffed out in annoyance at her intrusion.

"Hurry up! Beth's come over to see you!"

"I'm coming!" I begged her to leave so that I could figure out the hidden message Gerard had been slowly letting slip. I had never met somebody who intrigued me more than him, even when his words disappointed me, I still craved more of them.

"Erh, I should go sit with my mom, let you get changed and all," Gerard murmured, giving me a wide berth and slipping out the door. I stared blankly trying to comprehend the abstruse shit he had just said to me.

When I had finally gathered the confidence to go downstairs, now in my freshly washed kit, I feared he would have closed up on me again. It seemed whenever he got in that weird mood that always left me hopeful, he would shut himself off from me further than before. It appeared I needn't have worried though because as I walked down the stairs, he wolf whistled as if I was wearing a fucking mini dress or something.

"There's my boy!" He grinned up at me, pride spreading across his face.

"Shut up!" I whined trying to busy myself in pulling my knee high football socks up even further.

"Frank!" My mom snapped, "come and show us your outfit!"

"It's hardly any different to anybody else's, is it?" I didn't know why everyone seemed to have their attention on me nowadays, just when I didn't want it.

"Yes!" Gerard said jumping to his feet, "this is what makes you different to all of the others, bug!" He pinged the yellow captain band that was wrapped around my sleeve as if was a new part of my attire. I had been captain for years now, but he still couldn't get over it. I remember when Grimshaw had given it to me, I thought I had been ecstatic. That was until I'd seen Gerard's reaction, he'd made me feel like I'd been offered a place on the fucking England squad or something. In fact, the way he beamed proudly at that stupid band to this day, he could still make me feel like that.

After a few more awkward minutes of conversation with Gerard, Bethany and my mom fussing over my soccer accomplishments, they finally had to leave.

"Good luck for tonight, Franks!" His mom pressed a kiss to my cheek, leaving an intruding lipstick stain similar to my own mothers.

"Thank you, I'll let you know how it goes," I nodded, much to her delight.

"I'll see you later, bug!" Gerard ruffled my hair.

"You're coming?" I asked eagerly, not being able to disguise the way my heart had just felt as if it had burst right through my chest.

"I wouldn't miss it for the world, Franks!" He smiled warmly, before leaving me and my mom stood waving at the window as they disappeared down our path.

"Hey, Frank!" My mom pestered me again, "you didn't tell me Gerard had a girlfriend!"

It appeared I could not be truly happy for long without the universe reminding me that he was in love with somebody else.

——-

The wind whipped harshly on my cheeks but was nothing to the cruel taunts of the opposition from the left side of the stands. The game only had 15 minutes left of it and I had never experienced something quite so anticlimactic. The other team were better than any of us had thought, even Grimshaw. They'd gotten bigger, stronger, older guys in; barely fitting the rules of the under 21 league. It wasn't like we were terribly losing, but it sure fucking felt like it. Even when we lost, I felt something. This boring game left me numb just like my stupid barely beating heart. I tried not to let it bother me but every time I glanced over to the stands, all I saw was my parents and a few of our other friends, but not Gerard. I tried to channel the anger and the hurt into my footwork but it just wasn't fucking working. Nothing worked without him.

"Watch yourself!" The biggest of the opposition said as he attempted to slide tackle the ball from my feet. I didn't know what it was about football, but it seemed to increase testosterone more than a fucking shot of the stuff. I hated fighting, despite my recent activities saying different, I really did think it was pointless. That was until, however, that I was on the pitch and I felt that brutes sharp push when attempting to get the ball.

"Watch your fucking self!" I snapped as the linesman blew the whistle harshly at our debacle, running over quickly to separate us.

"Frank, leave it, man!" Coach Grimshaw cried at me as I tried my hardest to walk away. I didn't want to be given a red card but I'd seen this imbecile knock Kenny about too much in the first half to calm down. I was shaking with anger for some reason, but I figured it was actually coming from a place of hurt. I was fucking distraught that yet again he was probably coked up on the most important game of my life. There were fucking scholarship scouts here yet all I could do was make an absolute fool out of myself just because I was upset that I seemed to not compare to cocaine.

"Jack, isn't that the guy that Amber's seeing?" His friend jogged over to where me and the guy who was apparently called Jack were nose to nose with aggression. With the name Amber, I snapped my head up to see Gerard smirking at me from the side of the stands, as if he was proud of me for this stupid argument. I should have been furious with him, but all I could do was sprint over to him.

"Frank, get over here!" The referee screamed his whistle at me.

"My shoelace!" I lied pretending it was undone as I darted from the pitch towards my best friend.

"You fucker!" I ran at Gerard, half with aggression, half with love. It resulted in me tackling him in some sort of awkward hug that he didn't seem to mind.

"Sorry, Franks I just heard he was here and wanted to bring somebody to put him in his place but it appeared you already did that," Gerard flashed half an impressed grin at the fact I had attempted to take on his girlfriend's ex despite the dramatic size difference. I felt embarrassed when I looked behind him to see Dean and his other thug friends, but it appeared they weren't even looking at how Gerard was clinging to me, instead they were giving Jack a deathly glare.

"Trust you to start an argument with my girlfriend's ex-boyfriend, bug," He ruffled my hair "now go fucking win and I'll be waiting right here for when you do!" He bent down and pressed his lips messily to my cheek, just like he always did when I was playing in a serious game. It was innocent, I knew that, but he had not done it since he had tenderly pecked at my cheek just before he'd kissed my lips. Therefore, the action warmed me up. It was like I could feel the fire spreading from beneath his lips and down to my cold heart, igniting something in me. He didn't seem to care that Dean was there, he just wanted me to succeed and who was I to let him down?

He sent me on my way back to the pitch where the game resumed. I felt different, almost like the kiss on the cheek had given me a bounce to a step. My cheeks were already flushed from the cool air but now they were even worse. My heart was hammering against my chest as I felt the need to impress him somehow. There was only 10 minutes left but fuck it, he'd made it. That's all that I cared about. With the blow of the referee's whistle, I sprinted towards where I saw James getting bombarded with neanderthal boys attempting to steal the ball from his feet. Our team's possession of the ball was better than theirs and they always used bullying tactics to combat it.

"Jam!" I screamed at him as he tactically kicked the ball under one of the there teams parted legs as I felt it ricochet off my foot to where Matt was stood waiting for it. He used his stocky body advantage to rip through the wall of players that had built around him and run further towards the goal. Before it got too much, he quickly passed the ball back to me where I dribbled it between my feet, probably showing off a little too.

"This is for Ambs," I heard as I felt Jacks strong legs try and tackle me to the floor. I mean, it was brave of him to assume that this was the first altercation I had because of Gerard hoe activities. I wasn't new to this, I just laughed at him as I used my height to duck under his arm. I had always hated being short but it was moments like this where it was a blessing.

"Fucking yes, Frankie!" I heard Gerard scream from the side of the pitch. It was as if I had been a car running on a red fuel light and he was there to pour diesel into my tired body. I felt a surge of adrenaline as I kicked the ball towards the goal. I held my breath at their goalkeeper reached up at grazed the ball with his fingers, but literally screamed in joy as it slipped past his best efforts and into the top corner of the net.

"YES!" I heard coach Grimshaw yell, "MY FUCKING BOY!"

I could not bask in my coaches compliments long enough because James and Matt had already run at me and tackled me to the floor in excitement.

"You fucking beautiful little man!" Matt cried jumping up and down, making me laugh.

"I knew you could fucking do it!" James added, pressing his lips fiercely to the opposite cheek that Gerard had.

"That was offside!" I heard Jack cry as if he couldn't stand losing something else in his life. From the way he glared evilly between me and Gerard, I knew this probably ran deeper than football.

"Bollocks!" Grimshaw shouted.

"It wasn't offside," the referee confirmed with a nod "the score is one, nil."

I think that after my goal, I had reached the purest state of flow I had ever been in. Those remaining 6 minutes of the game felt like mere seconds as I let my feet take control. When the referee finally blew his whistle, I felt pure elation. It wasn't exactly our biggest defeat, I mean I think we were expecting to be able to walk all over the other team but it hadn't been that easy in the end. It didn't matter though because we won; we fucking won.

As soon as the final whistle was blown, I felt Grimshaw haul me up on his shoulder as the rest of my team joined in; even Toby. For once, I enjoyed the attention of being thrown about and praised just truly basking in happiness. The celebrations were far from over however once they'd put me back on to my feet as I was still being tackled into messy hugs.

"I can't believe you did it, Franks!" James gave me the biggest hug I think he had in his life as I stumbled under the force of him with my tired legs.

"No, _we_ did it Jam!" I wrapped my own arms around him as we just held each other for a second. That was until I felt an even stronger hand on my shoulder and suddenly nobody else on the pitch mattered to me. It was selfish, Gerard hadn't done anything for this team apart from show up right at the end but I probably owed it all to him. He breathed life into me like fucking CPR just when I had needed it most. I was so utterly in love with him that I couldn't help but tackle him into an embrace and wrap my legs around him in the process. He grabbed me so tightly, it truly felt like he was never going to let go as he spun our joined framed around, refusing to put me down. Again, he kissed my cheek with the same force from before right over where James had done it. It was almost like they were dogs marking their territory or something, constantly trying to overpower each other.

"I love you," he mumbled into my hair.

"I love you too!" I clutched him desperately before he finally put me back on my feet. I was a little embarrassed to see Dean and his other older friends watching us but felt a little more pride when they came over. Gerard still had not fully let me go, he had his arm thrown around my waist. To him, it was a careless action but to me, it was perfect.

"Nah, that was amazing!" Dean said, seemingly genuinely impressed. It was weird, I had never heard the guy speak before I had just assumed that the pills he popped had killed off his brain cells a long time ago. I still didn't like the guy, but it made me beam that someone like him had complimented me.

"Thanks," I blushed.

"Anyway, G, that little cunt Jack has fucked off so I think we're going to bounce, are you coming?" He asked Gerard who looked torn.

"Nah, Dean, I'm gonna stick with Frank for a bit but if you see Delo tell him my mom needed driving somewhere, yeah?" He said in that stupid voice he always put on around his other friends.

"Sure, I'll save you some of the good shit, yeah?" Dean raised an eyebrow at him.

"You're the fucking man, Deano!" Gerard smirked at the older guy as they retreated into the night towards Deans shitty rust bucket of a car.

"You didn't have to stay, yano," I blushed at him, turning to face him and splaying my hands on his chest as he clutched my waist. I didn't care that we probably looked weird, I had melted into him and was too far gone to stop.

"Yeah I did," he simply nodded before we were interrupted by my parents running over to us.

——

When everyone had finally stopped jumping around and celebrating, we finally started our walk back to Kenny's. I think Kenny was secretly thrilled when Gerard had asked if it was still okay if he joined because Kenny was a sucker for Gerard's charm too. Obviously not in the same way, I mean I think even I would have pushed Kenny about if he told me he was in love with him. It was more like an admiration a little brother may have for an older sibling, with the way he asked him thousands of questions and clung on to his every response. In fact, everybody seemed okay with Gerard joining us; except James. He had an attitude ever since Gerard had come over to us after the game, choosing to sit on the sidelines instead of joining in with our excitement about winning the league. I had tried to get him to stand up, but he was being miserable and selfishly, I wasn't prepared to sacrifice my own happiness. Gerard was being nice to them all, so why couldn't he just leave it?

"I'm so fucking happy, bug, and I didn't even play!" Gerard laughed throwing his arm around my shoulder.

"I mean, I'm fucking happy too. Exhausted, but happy!" I looked up at him, at his beautiful fucking smile bearing down on me. With the way I had his devoted attention, I could almost pretend that he loved me. I didn't like to think like that as it set me up for disappointment but, I felt tonight was a special occasion.

"Come here then!" He stopped us and pulled me towards his back.

"No!" I squealed as he attempted to give me a piggyback. It had been a fucking while since he'd done that to me, and I can't say my protest was particularly strong. Once he had managed to hoist me onto his back, I wrapped my limbs tightly around him, just breathing in the scent of his hair.

"Lucky," Kenny grumbled, barely able to lift his tired legs off the ground.

"I'll tell you what Ken, how abouts I give you one when Frank gets bored of me, yeah?" Gerard laughed at my friend.

"Tough tits Ken, I'm never getting bored of this," I sighed sincerely, wrapping my arms even more tightly around Gerard's neck.

"I'm gonna fucking throw up," Matt said dramatically, " _Oh! Harry!_   Won't you give me a ride home and be all over me in the most obvious kind of way?" He mocked us in a sarcastic tone, making his own best friend join in. I feared that Gerard was going to react badly to the sly comment, but instead, he just laughed along, finally fitting in amongst us for the first time in his life.

——

"Nah, Ken man, you're doing it wrong!" Gerard giggled at my friend who had practically begged him to let him try one of his cigarettes. After an hour of convincing me to let him, we were all gathered around Kenny who had inhaled a little too sharply on something so unfamiliar resulting in him hacking up a lung on his patio. We were all a bit tipsy, not like last time, just enough to find everything absolutely hilarious.

"Even I can do better than that, Kenny for fuck's sake!" I laughed as he keeled over trying to recover from the almost lung cancer he had apparently just developed from the one drag.

"Bullshit," he wheezed out between splutters.

"Give it here then," I smirked, trying to grab the roll-up from where Gerard had resumed holding it. It was only a cigarette full of tobacco and nothing stronger but I still had never done it properly before. I had pretended to take a drag once when Gerard had applied some heavy peer pressure when he first got in with Joe's crowd but I'd simply held the smoke in my mouth and awkwardly coughed it out. I didn't want to do that now though. I wanted to show him that I could be just like him. With the light buzz I had gotten from the beer I had consumed, I felt as if I could take on the world.

" _Frank_ ," James warned but I ignored him. It was a drag of a cigarette, I was hardly injecting some fucking heroin. Gerard had his music on loudly, and it was almost as if I was hearing it with new ears. The jumpiness of the track was only hyping me up further and I didn't dare to say, but for the first time in my life I think I was enjoying Stormzy.

"He's right, I'm not letting you touch this shit, Frankie," Gerard smiled down at me smugly, keeping the roll up just out of my reach. I wasn't a fucking baby and with the testosterone-fueled music in the background and my new found tipsiness, I jumped up and snatched it from him. He couldn't fucking control me; no one could. Before he could stop me, I inhaled sharply on the cigarette and held it deep in my lungs just like I had seen Gerard do too many times. I instantly regretted my actions as I felt my lungs burn with dissatisfaction. How the fuck did he enjoy this? I felt as if I was dying. My eyes were watering with how badly I wanted to cough, I wasn't going to though, not in front of Gerard. I tried to exhale the deadly smoke that had invaded my chest with the same expert twist he did but I ended up spluttering it out in an ugly cloud. I was still proud though, the burning in my chest was nothing compared to the thrill I felt with Gerard's grin.

"You can cough you know, Franks," he toyed with me, keeping his eyes locked with mine.

"Don't need too," I said my voice coming out hoarse with the temptation to give into him.

"Not at all, no?" He raised an eyebrow as if we were caught in some dominance match.

"Nah," I confirmed handing him back his cigarette "I quite liked it." I mean, it was obvious I was lying but I was embracing the fuzziness my head had gotten from the embarrassingly quick nicotine high. There was nothing quite like destroying your body to have a good time.

"You're a fucking idiot, Frank," James sighed heavily, pushing past me and walking back into Kenny's house on his own.

"What the fuck is his problem?" I frowned becoming increasingly annoyed at his new found attitude.

"He's fucking-" Gerard scowled at him before Matt shook his head furiously to shut him up. I felt shitty because even Gerard, who wasn't even in my group, seemed to know something that I didn't.

"He's stressed," Harry replied quickly, obviously lying with the way he looked at the ground.

"That's not my fault, is it?" I snapped, my anger probably being heightened by the alcohol and the fact that Gerard was by my side.

"No, but just be careful with him," Nathan sighed "he's a bit, erm, lost."

"Fucking whatever," I shrugged just turning to watch Gerard smoke instead.

I was almost worried that Gerard would bring something other than legal substances tonight, but he didn't. He contently sat with a beer, barely sipping it. I had seen him fucked out of his head many times and I really did not like who he became with it all. It was hard to watch somebody you just wanted to protect destroy them self in such a savage way. That's why I knew that Joe wasn't good for him because he wasn't here so Gerard was content with a single beer. I was definitely drunker than he was. He said he was tipsy, but I don't think he was. He seemed happy, like genuinely fucking happy for the first time in a while. I bathed in the warmness radiating from him, just wanting to bottle the moment forever.

"Everything okay?" I asked finally sitting down after recreating my final goal of the season for everybody again. Although he seemed happy, he looked deep in thought. He was doing his usual habit of biting on his hoodie sleeve, glancing at the floor as if he wanted to say something he couldn't find the words for.

"I'm fucking fabulous, bug," he forced a smile up at me as I dangerously interrupted his daydream. As I sat down next to him, he rested his hooded head on my shoulder and sighed heavily. "I am really fucking happy, I mean it, Frank."

"Yeah?" I smiled, gently stroking his warm cheek.

"Would I lie to you?" He looked up at me from under his hood and hair as the smile ran away from his face. It wasn't as if he was sad though, more like he had become lost in his thoughts again. We stayed like that for a while until he seemed to snap out of whatever the fuck his mind was wondering to. I knew him better than anybody, but there was still no way to comprehend him when he wanted to be guarded like this.

"Erm, I should probably ring Ambs," he said suddenly, jumping to his feet and far away from me. There was nothing that made me crash back to reality quicker than the mention of his girlfriend and the coldness he left on my shoulder where his head had been.

"O-okay," I stuttered, pulling my knees to my chest as I watched him walk into the other room. I too had become lost in my thoughts until I heard his muffled yells from the dining room.

"What's up with him?" Nathan asked, trying to hush us enough to hear Gerard's argument. I mean it was a little perverse of me, but I was secretly happy that there seemed to be trouble in paradise. He was so happy here that I just prayed that she had not upset him enough to make his mood turn.

"Probably fucked somebody else, again," James replied coldly not dragging his eyes away from the empty bottle in front of him. He'd decided to sit far away from me, and instead go on Tinder with Matt and Harry despite having no interest in the app.

"James!" I snapped at him.

"What, Frank? As if it's not true," he kissed his teeth at me, which only made me want to be further away from him.

"Shut the fuck-" I was interrupted by the sound of Gerard's heavy footsteps bounding back into the room where his demeanour had completely changed. His eyes locked with my own but the kindness from before had vanished, instead, he was pissed.

"You wanna fucking explain something to me, Frank?" He glared at me, as I blinked back helplessly. I had no idea what the fuck I had done but I was going to find out. She had probably found a way to put it in his head to stay away from me because I wasn't cool enough for them. I didn't snort random powder, I didn't fuck countless girls so I just wasn't good enough for them. She would never take him from me though; not unless he truly wanted to go.

"What?" I replied bluntly. It was easier to show no emotion at all because I feared if I truly let my annoyance out, I could have ended up falling to my feet as I had with James the week before.

"Not here," he waited impatiently for me at the door frame.

"Fine," I sighed hauling myself to my tired feet as I followed him up Kenny's matchbox stairs to his bedroom, far away from the prying ears of my friends. None of them said anything, they knew this was between the two of us. I was tipsy and now angry, and going to get some fucking answers.


	23. Darlin' that dams gonna give in PART 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The song I wrote this chapter to made me emo so here is the lyrics that inspired me; 
> 
> "you say that you're troubled and you always  
> have been  
> uncomfortable in your own skin  
> so you contemplate the riverbed  
> turn off the dark thoughts in your head
> 
>  
> 
> darling, darling that dam's gonna give  
> it's inevitable the way that you live  
> bottles in brown paper and a mouth that  
> slurs  
> all the shit that it stirs"
> 
> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FqU5Uhdl75s
> 
> Anyway, enjoy the shit storm.

It was almost funny being stood with Gerard in Kenny's bedroom as it had not appeared to change for the entirety of his teenage years. He still had a massive canvas of himself and his mother on the wall taken on one of their family holidays, her cradling him and him beaming up at her. The guy was constantly asking me why he didn't have a girlfriend but I think maybe they could not compete with the first woman in his life. I thought that I had been brave falling in love with Gerard, but the girl to eventually love Kenny was going to have to be a marine to handle his obsessive mother. I was surprised she had even left him the house to himself tonight, but fortunately for us, her sister was currently giving birth so she did not have much of a choice. Anyway, the weirdness of Kenny's attachment would have been funny to me if it were not for the love of my life staring at me like I was dirt.

"What?" I asked awkwardly back, not knowing how to place my arms or legs under his scrutinising stare.

"Don't act confused, Frank!" He snapped a little more harshly than I had been expecting. With his cruel tone, came the heaviness of my heart that I hadn't missed.

"I am fucking confused, Gerard!" I felt as if I was a spring being wound tighter and tighter until I had just completely let go. He had barely had to say anything to me, but I was just exhausted of not knowing where I stood with him. "One fucking minute you love me and the next you can't stand me, I don't fucking understand!" I think I was probably more confident as I was a little bit fuzzier headed than usual, but now the levy in my mind had burst, there was no holding the floor back. The fucking flood that had been building up for seventeen long, torturous fucking years.

"I do love you! That's the fucking problem!" He practically growled at me.

"There you fucking go, talking in those stupid riddles again! I'm not one of those stupid bitches falling at your feet, Gerard. I'm not playing your fucking games!"

"Me playing games?" He laughed cruelly in my face, getting too close for it to be comfortable, "you're the one that fucking over girls!"

"Are you being serious?" I laughed snidely back at him.

"Yes! I've just had to calm my fucking girlfriend down because you lead her best friend on and made her cry!"

"Cry?" I asked in confusion at how Hannah could be so hurt after knowing me for 6 fucking days.

"Yes cry, Frank. You made a girl cry, does that make you happy?"

"No! Of course, it fucking doesn't, I'm not you!"

"What the fuck is that supposed to mean?" He came even closer to me, flapping his arms in my face as if I was one of those idiots he argued with at school.

"It means you have the fucking audacity to say I make girls cry when you treat people like shit, Gerard!" I used the term people to subtly include myself. If I could not be completely honest with him, then I at least needed to get my aggression out in some way.

"Oh, _boo fucking hoo_ Frank! If people are stupid enough to trust me then-"

"Yeah, yeah it's their fault right, G?" I replied bitterly letting my own emotion project on to him. It confused me as to how such a perfect night was ending in us having a screaming match but it was like I couldn't control my self. I felt the agitation take control of my words and trembling body as I expelled my truths at him.

"If you hate that ideology so much, why the fuck did you treat Hannah like that?"

"Why do you fucking care so much?" I asked in frustration, almost pulling at my own hair.

"Because- because-" and with that, he did not continue, he just pushed me. I was shocked and I think he was too because we had never fought before. Okay, we bickered like crazy and when we had been younger, our play fights had sometimes ended in tears, but this was different. This was now from a place of love and fucking hurt if that was even possible. I stared at him, mouth hung open at his unusual action. The push had not been hard but it had been enough to make me stumble backwards and hit my leg on Kenny's desk. It didn't hurt but the way I lunged for him, you would have thought he'd just brutally attacked me. For some reason, I instantly became like a savage dog tackling him harshly to the floor. I told you it's not good to bottle up your love for someone because of the manifestation it causes. That ugly clump of feelings that had got caught up in my brain had now become dislodged and was spilling out in the most venomous sorts of ways. How he had gone to clinging off my arm to trying to force my weight off him in an hour, I did not know. In fact, I did know; I knew he was a prick. I hated myself for being in love with him and all I could do was roll around on the floor with him trying to hurt him. He was bigger than me but I was quicker, plus I had the advantage of passion fuelled rage which meant I was able to force my weight on him once again. I pinned his arms above his head with one of my hands and breathed heavily. With my other, I retracted my right fist and propelled it forward, connecting the punch to his nose. It was harder than I meant it to be, but he deserved it. He deserved it for all those times he'd lied to me, for all the times he'd ditched me and all the times he'd intentionally broken my fucking heart. The physical pain he was feeling was nothing to the mental torture he put me through every day. A thick droplet of blood trickled from his nostril as he cowered his face away from my first that was now pulling back to hit him again. Before I made the contact again, I halted as I had a vivid flashback to the time I'd witness someone else do this to him. We had only been twelve years old when some stupid fifteen-year-olds had jumped him for his expensive new bike and I had been forced to watch as they had pinned him down and punched him. I shuddered at the horrendous memory I had blocked out, holding my fist steady just above his face, panting heavily with the adrenaline. I just looked at him desperately, not knowing what to fucking do. It appeared to be a mistake though because he quickly used my deliberation to his advantage and hoisted up his body, tackling me to the floor in the process. His movements were quick and I had no time to try and prevent them as he completely switched our positions. He now had his fist held above my face and my arms pinned tightly above my head. I had never been punched before, not properly, and I didn't think it was meant to feel nice. I mean, Gerard's nose that was now dripping with warm blood indicated to me that it most definitely was not a pleasant thing to be hit in the nose. I screwed my eyes shut anticipating the pain, almost begging to feel something.

Except it wasn't quite what I expected.

Instead of agony, I felt something completely different. All too quickly, his tightly closed lips were on my own, pressing so hard my teeth clattered against my lip.

_Fuck._

His grip got tighter on my arms that he had pinned above his head, now bringing the hand he was threatening to hit me with down awkwardly to keep them in place. His lips were not warm and inviting as they had been before, they were angry and forceful but I welcomed them anyway. As quickly as he pulled back, he kissed me again more violently. I was fucking confused. I felt like I had been just thrown off a cliff., my stomach had completely lurched into my throat and if I had not been lying down I would have most definitely fallen over. He couldn't be kissing me, could he? This wasn't pre-arranged, it wasn't gentle, it was a closed mouth mess.

" _Fuck_!" He screamed jumping backwards but did not stop straddling me. It felt weird to hear his voice so fucking traumatised and to watch his hands run desperately through his hair. I didn't dare to think about what I looked like, I didn't know if I was fucking elated or fuming. "Fuck," he whimpered before bending back down and pressing his lips to my own again. It was a bit softer than before but still did not come from a place of love, instead, it was testosterone filled rage. He did not go slowly as he had before, instead, he kissed me with an open mouth, pushing his tongue greedily against my own. Suddenly, I seemed to understand everything he was trying to say with his nonverbal cues and gave into him. Now he had let my hands go, I grabbed at his hair hard pulling him even further into my mouth. It was almost as if we were still fighting with the way we were tangled up in each other rolling around the floor, kissing furiously. The noises he was desperately making into my open mouth was enough to give myself to him completely. He whimpered almost desperately, as if he was trying to drag himself away from me but just couldn't. He rolled us over again so he had his body half covering my own, making me feel his heart hammering against his chest. It was gross, but I didn't seem to care that his bloody nose was going everywhere. All I fucking cared about was his tongue moving against my own and his hands grabbing desperately at my chest. The pounding of the sub-bass downstairs was nothing to the pulsating in my head which made me grab his hair again. I didn't know why I was pulling at it, but it just felt right. I yanked particularly hard when I felt his hand grip my thigh causing him to whimper, but kiss me harder.

"Stop- fucking- with- my- head," he almost cried against my lips between kisses but made no attempts to move away. He didn't have the fucking right to say that to me, but I couldn't argue. I had really become a bug under his thumb that he could so easily kill. He moved from my lips to cover my neck in strong butterfly kisses, sucking and biting as he went. He slowly trailed his way to the delicate spot just under my ear as if he knew how to drive me even crazier. He sucked harder than before, working his tongue on the tender skin trapped between his teeth which made me let off a strangled moan a little louder than I had expected. He seemed to take it as an invitation to bite down harder, causing goose bumps on my skin and my toes to curl with want for him. Out of all the times I had imagined kissing him, this was probably the only scenario I had not thought about, leaving me in the dark with how to act. My body did not need made up daydreams though, it worked on its own accord especially when I felt the bulge in his jeans press against my leg. I almost groaned with it, biting down harshly on my lip causing the bitter metallic taste of blood. I got harder, if that were even possible, as I felt his hand snake up my thigh and closer to my crotch. He apprehensively cupped me through my shorts and all too quickly began pulling away as if he had only just remembered I was a boy.

" _Fuck_!" He yelled again, this time completely jumping away from where I was lying as he scrambled to his feet. I stared up at him completely lost, hauling myself up and supporting myself with my elbows. If his lips were not that certain shade of red that I had learnt to recognise, I would not have believed that he had kissed me at all. They were puffy and wet, only made worse by the fact he was gnawing on them anxiously. His cheeks were redder than before with blood smeared carelessly across them and his hair had grown wild from the way that he was pulling at it. "Why the fuck did you kiss me?" He whimpered desperately yet inaccurately. I wanted to argue with him, but my voice had been completely stolen when he had kissed me. "Why the fuck did-" and with that, he bolted towards Kenny's bedroom door. It was as if I felt as I did not have time to dwell as I leapt to my feet and sprinted after him, down the stairs. With Kenny's house set up, it meant we were both tearing through the living room where all my friends were sat, completely shocked at the scene in front of them. Of course, they did not know what had happened. All they saw were two former best friends, covered in blood, with one of them attempting to leave and the other trying to desperately grab their arm to get them to stay. He wasn't accepting my touch though, instead, he ripped his arm from my grip.

"Stay the fuck away from me!" He screamed in my face, moving more quickly to the door.

"Gerard!" I cried in desperation as he did not look back, just slammed the front door in my face.

I could not believe that I had thought I'd known heartbreak before. This was heartbreak, and it was fucking going to kill me. My whole body tingled with the emptiness, as I could not drag my eyes away from the door he had just left out of.

"Frank?" James came rushing into the hall "what the fuck happened?"

"Fuck off, fuck off, just fuck the fuck off!" I yelled in his face, copying the actions of my best friend and leaving the house in a hurry.

The air outside was bitterly cold but was not enough to drag me out of the state of shock I was in. He had kissed me and then he had fucking left and now he was nowhere to be seen. As I stumbled down the path and towards the direction of the side of town I was not familiar with, I could barely comprehend anything in my head. The voices in my thoughts were screaming so loudly that none of them were understandable, just a horrendously loud mess. I put my hands over my ears and begged for the noises to stop; they didn't though. This had been my own fault, I shouldn't have fucked everything up. I thought that loving him was the most agonising thing that could have happened to me, I quickly learnt it wasn't though. The most painful thing was trying to live without him.


	24. He'll never love you like we do

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sorry this chapters boring because I didn't want to rush things
> 
> But again this is summary is just ramble so don't be compelled to read lol 
> 
> ANYWAY like I said before I don't actually like football I just know about Liverpool because my boyfriend and friends support them which is a coincidence bcos I think Frank likes them?? I don't actually know I think I saw it on twitter once. 
> 
> Also half term in the UK is like a week off just (which I don't think Americans have??? I don't know I'm bad at this)
> 
> & I had to bring in the nose ring and the shaved bleached side just because that was my whole emo childhood
> 
> FINALLY, this is the song Kenny is singing just because I think sometimes everyone needs a friend like Kenny sometimes (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DvUeqRmUO9Q)
> 
> Sorry I'll shut up now + Hope you're ready for the next impending shit storm about to hit!!!!

I had never been more grateful for a half term in my whole entire life. I would trade all those long summer nights on my bikes with my friends and those previous family cookouts for the school break I had now because I had never needed it more. I had spent four consecutive days in bed barely eating, barely sleeping and barely fucking breathing. I had never experienced depression and did not want to claim a mental illness like that as my own, but I suddenly understood why Gerard sometimes physically could not function. I tried, I tried so fucking hard to drag myself to my feet and enjoy my autumn break, but I just couldn't do it. I had lost track of night and day, my curtains being kept tightly closed and my phone shut off for good. I already knew Gerard was going to be destroying himself again and it was all my fault, I didn't need to see it. I didn't need the constant reminder that he wasn't thinking of me with the lack of messages. He knew how to reach me, but I knew that he wouldn't. That didn't mean I didn't secretly pray that every time the doorbell went, that it would be him. It never was though, obviously. If he hated me so much, why had he kissed me? I'd asked myself that question so much it was beginning to make me insane.I was surprised I had even made it home on Saturday night because I had stumbled around the wrong side of town aimlessly until the sun had begun to come up. I hadn't even wanted to go home but I had been violently shivering with only my soccer kit on. The same kit that was thrown in the corner of my bedroom, unwashed and still stained with his blood. I had told my mother that I was ill and luckily she had been so busy at work, she had not questioned me. I did feel ill though, with every intrusive image of his lips on mine, violent butterflies flapped their wings in my stomach causing me to groan in actual pain. If it was not for that, then I probably would not have believed that he had actually kissed me again. Well, that and the violent, angry bruise he had left on my neck. It had begun to fade slightly, the purple hue slowly changing to a murky yellow one, but it was still there. It still fucking hurt to touch, but I liked the pain. Every time I pressed at the tender skin, it was like his teeth were grazing there all over again. I had never loved anything more in my whole entire life, and he had just made it a million times worse.

"Franks, are you gonna get up today?" My mother sighed impatiently at me, barging into my squalor bedroom when she'd returned home from work."Ill," I grunted burying my body up to my neck so she could not see the telltale mark on my neck.

"I get that, sweetie, but you're going to make yourself sicker if you don't even shower!" I mean, she wasn't wrong. I hadn't even got the energy to wash since Saturday because I was just too fucking sad. No fuck that, my heart had literally stopped beating. "What's really wrong, Frank?" She sighed sitting down on the end of my bed putting a what she thought was comforting hand on my leg through the duvet.

"Nothing," I froze. I did not need my mother to know any of the shit going on, she would never keep her mouth shut to Bethany.

"You just seem... down." She concluded after searching for the right word. Down was the understatement of the century, but I didn't expect her to understand. She believed in love; I fucking didn't. There had been no tenderness to his kiss, just pent up anger that I had greedily and selfishly accepted because I thought it had been what I wanted. I thought his kisses would leave me in Heaven; instead, I was buried in the cold, lonely ground."I'm fine!" I snapped at her. I didn't mean to take my anger out on her, it was just she was closet to me. That venom I spat at her was really meant for Gerard.

"Okay! Well you have the Champions League on Saturday, don't you? Surely you want to get better so you can support your team in that, yeah?" She attempted to cheer me up with the thought of a football game I had been anticipating for a while now that my favourite team Liverpool were in. I was supposed to be spending the day with my friends watching it but I genuinely just could not be fucked to do so. I didn't even have the heart to watch it by myself because for the first time in my life football was not going to save me. Whenever Gerard upset me before, I could put on a game or play and be almost fixed for a while but now, neither of those things were working.

"Not going," I grunted from under my pile of duvets.

"Oh, Frankie," she just sighed heavily before realising she was not going to get a worthwhile response from me and left. After another two days of being bed bound, I was still no closer to rising to my feet. I was being pathetic. Gerard did not owe me a fucking thing, I knew that. I just wished he'd kept me out of whatever he was trying to do. I could cope with just being his friend, I'd still love him but I could cope. This silence was deafening and slowly killing me like a cancer though. It was like he dangled the meaning of life in front of me and then snatched it all away. I wished I hadn't read all those stupid fucking Larry stories because they'd given me a false representation of love. Love was not pink and beautiful, it was a decrepit and ugly manifestation of pain. I'd been able to lie in on Saturday morning because we were having a break from practice after the tournament. Not that it mattered, I didn't think I would have gone anyway. I'd also learnt to ignore the pounding of feet up the stairs because mostly it was just my mother trying to force food on me and I'd realised if I pretended to sleep, she would eventually go away. The footsteps I was hearing sounded different though, less mom like and more...

" **GET UP, FUCKER**!" I heard my second favourite voice as a heavyweight jumped on me. I groaned willing the event to be some extremely realistic sleep paralysis or something but the way the duvet was ripped from my head, it wasn't. I almost felt like hissing at the sunlight that infiltrated my room, I had become accustomed to the darkness both in my room and my head. James was sat on top of me, beaming like a puppy who had just waded its way through a filthy puddle. There behind him stood all of my friends like a fucking intervention or something."Frank, it fucking smells like testosterone in here," Matt grimaced as if he had a bedroom that smelt of roses or something and not like a gym locker room.

"Fuck off, I'm ill!" I whined attempting to turn over, but not being successful.

"Nope, we're not having that are we boys?" Nathan said, smirking as if I didn't have a choice in the matter.

"Nah, now go shower stinky," James laughed at me, "and I'll get you some clothes out."

I sighed and debated it heavily. I wanted nothing more than them to go away but they were right, I did need a shower. I hated to admit it, but James was right. He was always fucking right. The warm spray of the shower head seemed to wash away at least some of my demons reminding me that I wasn't quite dead yet. Despite spending my days with my head under a duvet, I don't think I had rid of the chill to my bones that I had contracted on my aimless walk on Saturday night. The warm water bouncing off my skin changed all that and I felt somewhat human again. I was glad no one could see me because I had my eyes closed and head thrown back just enjoying feeling something. It wasn't much, more like a niggle in the back of my head, but it was something other than pain. I finally managed to drag myself from under the showers spray after contemplating satisfying my urges for a good 15 minutes. It was strange, I hadn't really thought about jacking off for the whole week because I hadn't been in the mood for anything but self-pity. Finally, though, my body seemed to wake the fuck up and I'd had to stand and think about everything non-sexual for what seemed like ages to rid myself of the thoughts of his hands on me. Instead, I turned the tap onto the cool setting trying to calm down, thinking it was a little weird considering my friends were waiting for me and I'd go and have to look Kenny in the eye after it. Once I had stepped out of the shower, I looked at myself in the mirror for the first time all week. I looked fucking rough. My eyes were stained a dirty red with the inconsistent sleep and my skin looked like something you may see on a mortuary slab but that was nothing to the ugly mark on my neck. If it weren't for the spine chilling memory attached to it, I think I would have quite liked it because he left it there. Every time I saw it though, it just reminded me of him slamming that door in my face. I thought it would have gone away in 7 days but it appeared I would not be so lucky. It was not as bright and angry as it had been earlier in the week but it was still there, being a constant reminder that he had left me. I gingerly traced the mark with my fingertips making shudders go down my spine with the sensitivity it still had.

"Thank fuck for that," Matt rolled his eyes when I came back into my room, "we thought you were wanking or something-"

"You are so fucking weird, Matt," I scoffed at him, not liking the vulgarity of his words. "but I do love ya."

"Hmm and I must love you too to be sat in this fucking dungeon instead of being outside in the sun."

"Matt, It's October," Harry giggled at the thought of the cold air outside "and you still sleep with two blankets in summer."

"Shut up!" He rolled his eyes "anyway, has anyone told emo boy what we're doing today?"

"I'm not emo!" I protested but no one was listening they were all discussing my life as if I was not in the room.

"Right, so, there's no beating around the bush here, Frank," Kenny said softly as if he was a doctor giving me some tragic news or something. He reached over from where he was sat and awkwardly patted my hand causing a snigger from my friends behind us. "and I don't want you to be mad, okay? Can you do that for me?"

"Stop being so patronising Kenny and just tell him that we all fucking know," Matt snapped, leaving me frozen.

"Know what?" I said cautiously.

"Don't be stupid, Frank!" Harry shook his head "we're not stupid we know that you're gay."

"What?" I replied weakly.

"Gay," Matt said bluntly as if I didn't understand the declarative statement.

"James!" I shot to my feet and pushed him harshly, not really thinking about my actions just going on impulse. I was suddenly fucking furious, he had no right to tell people my feelings.

"Calm down, shorty!" Matt sighed "it wasn't James were just not all dumb like you think we are."

"Huh?" I said pathetically. I mean my life was already ruined, it could not get any worse.

"Look, I don't really get it myself because you're short and fucking annoying but girls like you Frank and you never seem to care," Matt began, expelling all the harsh truths that I hadn't realised he'd noticed. "then whenever Gerard comes around, you're all over each other, like weirdly so. Then you get really pissy if he brings a girl around, Oh! I also saw you gorming at him when we were swimming last summer."

"I-I" I tried to argue but I did not have the energy.

"Oh, and that hickey that suddenly appeared after you went upstairs was a nice subtle touch, Frank." Harry laughed at my downfall. I'm glad the bruise that had caused me so much mental torment had made at least somebody laugh. I glanced over at James, he had his eyes glued to the floor not joining in the laughter of the others. I suddenly felt incredibly guilty for blaming him for telling everyone when in reality, he'd probably tried his hardest to defend me. It had been my own careless life choices that had led to my exposure, not my second closest friend.

"Anyway, we were talking about how to drag you out of bed last night and Kenny actually made a very good point." Nathan nodded to a proud looking Kenny.

"What?" I asked still trying to get over the fact that they knew everything and had done for a while. Who the fuck else knew?

"Well he was actually talking about _New Moon_ ," Harry rolled his eyes.

"Because it's a good film, Harry!" Kenny protested "anyway when Edward leaves Bella she goes a bit insane and she does all this stuff to feel adrenaline and that." He confirmed as if the Twilight books were the DSM-5 or something.

"Get to the point, Ken," Nathan sighed.

"So, we were thinking of doing some stupid shit to make you feel better." Kenny finalised. It took a second to comprehend, but maybe my little ginger, annoying friend was not so useless after all.

"What have you always wanted to do, but haven't because of what Gerard would say?"

——-

"Take a breath on three. Okay, _one, two, three_..." The guy with the tattooed shaved head said to me as I felt a sharp pinch on my nostril.

"Gross," Kenny groaned, all the blood draining from his face as if he was the one with a needle sticking through his nose.

"Now you're an official emo!" Matt clapped his hands together sarcastically. As much as I wanted to reply, the other guy was attempting to shove a silver hoop through the fresh wound so Matt had escaped this one. When my friends had asked me what I wanted to do I thought of the first thing all troubled kids do when they want to make a statement. I'd learnt that if you ever see a kid randomly get a nose piercing, you should probably mind your business.

"Seeing you covered in blood is becoming a regular occurrence," James half smiled at me as I walked out of the piercing shop with blood pouring out of my nose from the fresh wound. He hadn't spoken to me since I pushed him and I'd been guiltily clinging to his side silently.

"James, I'm sorry-"

"It's okay," he said quickly "you can make it up to me by explaining though."

"Yeah, I promise."

——-

I didn't know who I had been kidding earlier in the week, of course, I was going to watch my team play in their most important game of the year. I was sat wide-eyed and crossed legged in front of Kenny's TV waiting for all my favourite players to come out.

"Frank, there's still 20 minutes to go!" Nathan shook his head at me and my eagerness.

"Shh!" I hissed not wanting to miss a second.James came and sat next to me, placing a heavy head on my shoulder, finally making me drag my eyes away from the TV screen.

"Missed you," he sighed into me, as I reached up and gave him a half hug.

"I missed you too," I replied genuinely. I hadn't realised how much I actually had missed his presence because my longing for Gerard had been too strong to consider anything else.

"Is it weird being back here?" He asked awkwardly. He was right, it was strange being back at Kenny's, almost like returning back to the scene of the crime. I was glad it was such an important game because it meant that there was something to distract myself from the excruciating pain in my chest every time I thought about the way that he had kissed me.

"A bit," I mumbled back at him.

"What happened, Frank? I thought that it was just one time."

"Well, it was but then-"

"Because he seems to be on one again, I always seem him stumbling around town fucked out of his head with that Amber girl," The thought of Gerard turning to Amber made me furious but not as much as the thought of him being dangerously intoxicated. It wasn't my responsibility but I still cared about him. He knew the drugs made me him worse and I dreaded to think of the cocktail he'd be taking of them to block out the thoughts of what he had done. Except, he'd asked me why I'd kissed him didn't he? I think he truly believed it was me who made the first move. It was stupid though because he was always in control and if I was going to kiss him, I would have done it a long time ago. I didn't understand how you could just one day wake up and decide to kiss your best friend, I don't get what was running through his head! Saying that though, I didn't even think Gerard could comprehend his thoughts.

"Woah, Woah," Matt ran over "if you're talking about Gerard then I want to know the story."I sighed accepting my defeat and explained everything to my eagerly waiting friends.

"It all makes sense!" Matt said, "I always wondered why he'd fucked over Rosie and that but it's because he's gay!"

"He's not gay!" I protested that was the problem.

"Erm he touched your dick, man," Nathan asked in confusion, "whilst making out with you,"

"No! It was probably an accident!" I whined, "please, don't tell anyone."

"We're not stupid, Frank," Matt said kindly, much to my surprise "I just hope you know I'm going to take the piss out of you for the rest of our lives."

"That's fine, I probably deserve it," I replied, feeling the weight being lifted off my heart a little more.

"So, if you two were gonna fuck, would he fuck you?" Matt asked intently and openly. Luckily, I was saved from answering as the whistle on the TV blew and the game began. 

\-----

"YES!" I screamed at the top of my lungs jumping all over James. He had again gone quiet ever since I'd confided in him but there was nothing like our favourite team winning to cheer him up "fucking Bobby Firmino you beautiful man!"

We cheered around the room until our voices were hoarse and we were out of breath. I didn't need alcohol or anything like that, all I needed was some fucking good company.

"Boys!" Kenny's overbearing mother came running into the room with a tray full of snacks "you're going to cause a riot!"

"Mom!" Kenny whined but still accepted the sloppy kiss she placed on his cheek causing muffled laughter amongst all of us.

"Anyway, I brought you boys some food, in case you were hungry," she said placing the tray down in the middle of the room. For the first time all week, I was fucking ravenous.

——-

"Oh, Kenny can we please turn Little Mix off?" I whined as he played the seventh consecutive Little Mix song. Kenny was everything that you would expect off a mommy's boy, dependent, clingy and loved pop princesses a little too much.

"No! They're the best medicine for heartbreak, Frank!" He said turning up the volume to some overproduced track.

"I'm not heart bro-" He interrupted my protests with the sound of his ugly, scratchy, voice singing along in an octave that was way too high for him.

" _He's never gonna love you like we do, but please he's never gonna find someone like you_." He sang coming over and wrapped me in a hug from behind, making Matt and Harry explode with the tragicness of the situation.

"Kenny!" I whined begging him to leave me alone because even James was smirking.

"This line- _be honest his best friend was hotter than him!"_ He continued to sing and for the first time, I let him take control of my arms and make me dance around the room.I didn't think I would ever be seventeen-years-old prancing around with Kenny to a Little Mix song, but I guess maybe he wasn't so wrong about it being the best thing for heartbreak.

——- _The next day_ ———-

"Just do it!" I scrunched my eyes shut as the buzzing noise got closer to my ear. Why I was trusting Harry to give me a haircut, I didn't know but fuck it. Harry was not exactly Guy Tang but I had more belief in his abilities than I did any of the others. I didn't even really know what we were going for, but I just wanted something different. I was nervous, I'd had the same boring nearly black hair my whole life, cut in the most standard way possible. It was too late to go back anyway because I suddenly felt one side of my head become considerably lighter as I felt the loose hair falling and tickle my arm.

"Wait!" I screamed, suddenly regretting my spontaneity. I grabbed the mirror frantically and tried to ignore the way that Matt was biting his lip to stifle his laughter. "Oh, God," I groaned as one side of my head was now considerably shorter than the other.

"Let me do the other side then!" Harry whined, turning the razor on again for emphasis.

"No!" I yelled jumping away from him, "how the fuck do we fix this?" I was panicking because my intention was to show Gerard that I was living my best life, not having a 2007 Britney Spears breakdown.

"My mom has some bleach that she uses on her roots!" Kenny clapped his hands together in glee already running off to get the product.

"I'm not bleaching my fucking hair!" I called after him. One time, Nathan had thought it was a good idea to go through his Slim Shady phase and dye his hair to match. Except, he hadn't toned it so it had gone a gross rust colour that I didn't wish to have. Plus, I might have been wanting a change but I didn't want to be a fucking blonde, I'd look ridiculous.

"Trust me!" Kenny ran back in the room, already mixing the chemicals together in his mother's hair dye tub.

"Fuck it, can't get worse," I sighed in defeat as he started to lather the strong smelling bleach on the shaved side of my head.

——

"Kenny, have you ever thought about being a hairdresser?" Harry blinked between me and Kenny now that half my head was white. It should have looked dumb, but I kinda liked it. It felt like I had spent years being too scared to become myself but now I was finally letting go. I had been so uptight with trying to be that perfect soccer boy that I had forgotten myself in the process. I had finally been reborn though, and no one could make me change my mind.

"How did you get his goth hair to go that white?" Nathan fumed at the way my hair had just gone the intended colour and not through the horrific orange stage that he had.

"Well, I mixed a toner together why it was developing to combat the yellow undertones-"

"You sure you ain't the gay one, Ken?" Matt facetiously raised his eyebrow.

"No! I just do my mom's hair sometimes." He mumbled

"I'm _not_ gay!" I argued but they had already started making plans for the final night of our half term.

——

"Frank! Cheer up!" Kenny said skating past me backwards. He always managed to surprise me with his weird talents.

"No," I grumbled, "I'd rather be giving my eyeballs paper cuts than be at a roller disco."

My friends had decided that I still wasn't happy enough so had dragged me along to a roller rink I had not been to since I was 12. That was the thing though, it was full of young kids dabbing under neon lights to a stupid Big Shaq song and I had never felt older. We were at that awkward in-between stage, because we were also too young to get into the conjoining bar leaving us stuck in an awkward limbo. Well, I was stuck, my friends were having the fucking time of their lives skating rings around me.

"For someone with such intricate footwork on the pitch, you fucking suck, Frank!" Harry laughed as once again my feet danced with attempts to keep me on my feet.

"Because this is fucking stupid!" I complained.

"Look, Frank, we all fucking know you'd rather be off getting your dick sucked by your weird best friend but unfortunately he isn't around and I'm not going to offer to take his place," Matt said crudely. I blushed with the mention of head because I tried not to think about things like that with Gerard but with the way my friends laughed at me, I didn't have time to dwell. Instead, I appeared to find my footing as I began cautiously skating to catch Matt to drag him to the floor.

"I'm fucking sick at this!" I said after a while, finally keeping up with my friends. James had been clinging on to my arm to keep me on my feet and I had finally gathered the confidence to let go. With my cocky statement and James retracted support, I fell hard on my ass in the middle of the floor.Despite the pain shooting up my wrist, my friends just laughed.

"Hey," I grumbled trying to get back to my feet but just ended up falling again.

"Come here, idiot," James rolled his eyes, hauling me to my feet.I'd left my friends to it as I went to soothe my sore wrist. I clutched it close to my chest as I sat on one of the benches at the side as everything seemed to creep back into my thoughts. I watched Harry and Matt skate around happily, dragging Kenny as they went, the bright lights dancing off their faces. I wished Gerard and I had kept things like that, I missed just joking around with him. He knew me like no one else and it sucked to not have contact with someone that could ruin your life with one slip of any secret. He knew about all my embarrassing stories that he could so fickly tell Joe and ruin any ounce of respect I had at school. Then again, I knew his, so I doubt he would be so stupid.

"Don't say you've broken it, we need you on that pitch for the final tournament!" James came and expertly skated to sit next to me. His face was so kind and genuine, I dreaded to think of all the times I had hurt him.

"Nah," I flexed my wrist to prove that it wasn't serious.

"You okay, Franks?" He asked tenderly placing a hand on my bunched up fists.

"No," I admitted, "not really."

"Didn't think so. You can act like that in front of them but not me," he nudged me gently.

"I know, I just don't want people to get too involved, yano? I don't want it getting back to him."

"He kissed you though, wasn't your fault," he shrugged.

"I didn't exactly push him away," I cringed thinking to how much I had let myself go, pulling his hair hard to bring him closer to me.

"You do realise that you're too good for him?" He raised an eyebrow.

"You have to say that, you're my friend." I sighed.

" _Hmm_ ," he mumbled, "For fuck's sake!" He suddenly snapped.

"What?" I looked up quickly only to see Gerard and his stupid friends stood hanging over the bar. He looked run down and more like the rest of his friends than he ever had before. He had his hands shoved down the front of his tracksuit bottoms, and a hat pulled far over his head trying to fade into the background. It wouldn't work though, I could pick him out of a crowd of a million people.


	25. There's still a thread that runs from your body to mine

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> I don't like writing from Gerard's POV cos I don't like giving away with what's going on his head but his relationship with Ross is important for the next couple of chapters :) and I promise this is the build up for something bigger lol

**G POV-**

"Popping pills again, G?" Ross frowned coming over to me shoving Citalopram down my neck. I had spent the whole week in a dizzy haze, barely conscious enough to think. I didn't want to think though, because every time I did, I saw a pair of hazel eyes begging me for something I didn't understand. Every time I remembered that night, I inhaled or smoked more toxins or fucked Amber to drag my mind away from him. I was exhausted with battling my inhibitions but I couldn't give in to it.

"Erh, yeah," I replied awkwardly trying to hide the prescription packet from my friends prying eyes. I hadn't been taking my antidepressants because I stupidly thought I hadn't needed them. I was fucking wrong though and with the mention of doing a tab of acid next weekend, I wanted to be in a good headspace. With that, I gave in and grabbed the stupid fucking white coated pills from my bag when I had thought all my friends were occupied.

"What are they?" The nosey fuck attempted to grab the foil packet from my hands.

"Something Dean gave me," I lied "chills you out or something."

"Gerard," he said seriously, finally snatching the packet from my hands "why are you taking antidepressants?"

"They're not!" I tried to argue. I hated those stupid fucking things and how I was so dependent on them. Frank always told me I was addicted to coke, I wasn't, I was addicted to fucking serotonin. With any addiction though, I needed more and they'd bump my dosage up even higher. I thought I was getting better but now things were worse than ever. I had pulled my hair out with trying to comprehend how I could have it all and still be so fucking miserable and stupid. It didn't matter though, I was still numb. Last Saturday was scarier than ever because, for the first time in my pointless life, I'd felt something be revived in the very back of my brain and if I did not spend my days in a hazy way, I didn't think I could stop myself from going searching for that feeling again. It was easier to ignore his existence, which is exactly what I planned to do. I needed to be stronger, I had given into his hypnotic eyes one too many times and look at where it had left me.I wasn't gay, I wasn't weird infatuated with my best friend and I wasn't going to ever burden him ever again. It just confused me though, in my moment of weakness, he had given in. I had expected him, no,  wanted him to push me away viciously and never talk to me again. He didn't though, he had just been giving into every one of my advances.

"My mom takes them," Ross sighed, thankfully snapping me out of my mind. Fuck the Mariana Trench, the deepness that my thoughts could reach could make it look shallow in comparison.

"Don't tell Delo," I begged him a little manically. I had kept the truth of my mind far away from my friends because it would only leave me weaker in their eyes. I couldn't go back to that nobody, it would kill me. I clung to Joe like he was a life-saving float or something, just about saving me from drowning in my mind. Every time Joe had seen me in states of depression, he'd tell me to get the fuck over it. He didn't understand, nobody did except Frank.

"Nah, I won't. Just tell me why you take them!" Ross pestered me. My friendship with Ross was always a little different from the others. He was always the one to pester me to eat even when I really didn't want to, almost as if he could read my mind. He wasn't as emotionally cold as the others, but I still did not wish to share this with him. "Is it because Franks not around?"

"What?" I snapped at him. I had not been ready to audibly hear his name yet, and Ross had just forced upon me so nonchalantly.

"Whenever you're sad you go to him but you've been with us all week haven't you?" He shrugged as if it was nothing. On Saturday night, I'd ran to Amber to get my frustrations out and then I had gone to Dean's and spent the week in oblivion. I had only gone home for a change of clothes and I think my mom was beginning to panic that I was spiralling out of control again; I just couldn't stop. I felt bad for hurting her, but I couldn't change. People just shouldn't care about me, then they wouldn't get dragged into my self-destruction.

"Dunno," I shrugged not daring to tell the truth. He did make me feel better, but also twenty times worse and I couldn't physically take the feelings that he brought with him.

"I like Frank," he said nonchalantly "he's good for you."

"Is he?" I almost laughed because the poison he'd left on my lips was still making them tingle. How the fuck was he good for me?

"Yep," he nodded "but don't tell Delo I said that." He repeated my words as if we even needed to say them anymore. There were some things we just kept from Joe, it made life easier.

"Nah Gerard man," Joe came bursting into the room laughing hysterically at something on his phone. "Have you see where your boyfriend is?"

"Huh?" I glared but was quickly answered as he shoved the device in my face. He was showing me Nathan's social media story where I had to watch my best friend roller skating awkwardly in a five-second video. It was strange seeing his face again, I had tried my hardest to avoid it. It was so pure and good, contrasting to my own wretched soul. He looked different, he'd cut and dyed his hair and he had his nose pierced. He'd always wanted to do that but I'd always stopped him because of what Joe would do to him, he didn't care though. He didn't care anymore just when I cared more than ever.

"Why is he at the roller disco, is he twelve?" Joe said snidely.

"I don't know, Delo," I sighed "I've not spoken to him."

"And what the fuck has he done to himself? He looks like Glenn fucking Danzig!"

"I said I don't fucking know!" I snapped.

"Aw, bless, have I touched a nerve?" He mocked me cruelly "Do you not like me taking the piss out of your little boyfriend?"

"Do what you want, Delo," I was getting increasingly annoyed at him saying shit like that and it left me giving off a careless response. As much as I didn't want to see Frank, I just prayed Joe would leave him alone. For someone so in denial about mental health issues, I had never met a bigger narcissist than Delo. It didn't matter though, I owed Joe everything so I would always do whatever he said.

"Okay, let's go to the bar at the rink then!" He smirked, evilly.

"No! I didn't mean that-"

"Joe!" Ross dared to warn him despite it being a futile protest. Joe had more power over Ross than anybody, but I appreciated him trying.

"Shut the fuck up Ross!" He yelled a little too loudly making him retreat backwards in defeat. "Gerard, if you're truly not fucking that gimp then why won't you mess with him?"

"Because my mom will kill me!"

"She's not gonna find out!"

"Well, I don't have any ID to get into that bar so-"

"Borrow Deano's," he shrugged as if he enjoyed seeing my torment. I couldn't physically protest anymore though, Joe had won just like he always did.

——

I pulled my cap tightly over my head with hopes of him not recognising me. It was obvious that he was the reason we'd come here. It was not in my usual hang out place, and he was definitely fucking aware of it. I was still feeling a buzz of the copious amount of coke I had been doing, so at least I had that to fall back on. I thought I could just go in and not care honestly. I didn't even expect to really see him because the place was full of young kids and the bar was in a different section. I was stupid though, I would always be drawn to him.He was sat there on the side, hand bunched tightly in a fist with James' stupid fucking palm covering them. It drove me crazy to see the way he was all over him and there was nothing I could fucking do. Every time I'd been able to separate them by being present, it always lead to something darker happening. If I had not been so persistent with putting James in his place las Saturday then I would not have kissed him. I just had been driven crazy by the way he'd been forcing his new relationship with Hannah and then all of a sudden it was over. I was confused and I had no idea what the fuck I wanted anymore.

"Go on then," Joe encouraged slamming a pint of larger into my hand "go put him in his place."

I did not understand why Joe enjoyed seeing Frank so miserable because his smile was everything good to me. It was made almost worst when I was causing the unhappiness on his face, the same scowl he was now looking up at me with at the rink.

"Joe he's not doing anything man-" I weakly tried to argue with him.

"He is. He's existing and he's trying to take you away from me, G!"

"He's not!"

"Gerard! Do it!"

"Fine," I mumbled reluctantly leaving the safety net of the bar and going over to where my best friend was stood.I thought of all the things that I could say, anything not too bad but something strong enough to impress Joe. I tried to take all the time in the world to get to him but could not make it last forever. He looked up at me with those stupid whiskey coloured eyes that always made my voice catch in my throat. He was watching me like a helpless baby gazelle watching a lion like I had all the power in this sick little game we were playing. I was never in control though, it was always him.

"Fra-" I began, still thinking of words that would wind him up to Joe's satisfaction.

"Just don't," He rose to his feet awkwardly, the skates still interfering with his movements. I just stared dumbly as he skated off towards his friends.

"You lost, Gerard. Just let him go!" James rose to his feet, towering over me in his skates. Me and James had never spoken properly, but there was always some weird tension between us. I knew he was jealous that I had known Frank in a way he never could and I was always angry that he had taken him away from me all those years ago.

"I can't do that," I said aggressively, " _you_ let him go!"

"No, because I don't treat him like shit."

"He doesn't want you, James! He's never fucking going to want you!" I yelled at him, suddenly letting the pent up anger caused from watching him be all over my best friend for years spill over at the seams.

"What the fuck is that supposed to mean?" He scowled at me.

"You know what it means! You love him and you can never fucking have him!"

"Fuck you, and leave us alone. He doesn't want to see you." He snapped pushing past me, leaving me staring at how effortlessly he skated to Frank and acted as if I didn't exist. I couldn't stand it when he did that. He couldn't just pretend I didn't exist because it drove me to the edge of insanity. 

 

I spent the rest of my miserable evening drinking too much beer watching him have the time of his life without me, as if we'd never known each other at all.


	26. Who's waking up to drive you home when you're drunk and all alone

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Finally getting to the good stuff lol

**F POV-**

I didn’t expect him to talk to me, let alone act as if nothing had happened. All those times he’d been so cold with me when he’d gotten a little too close for comfort manifested in my mind all of Monday morning waiting for him to come into school. I had purposely stayed out his way until I couldn’t avoid him for any longer and we had our psychology lesson together. I wanted to skip it so badly but my mom clearly knew I wasn’t ‘ill’ anymore so that just wasn’t an option.

I wouldn’t describe him as his normal self, more like a child with ADHD. I sat down nervously next to him, carefully avoiding his gaze as his legs tapped insistently like he was ready to explode with something. I was shocked that yesterday, I had actually been able to ignore him because he was still tragically beautiful enough to make my heart hammer against my chest. I thanked James for that power. He didn’t tell me what they spoke about, all he did was reassure me that he wasn’t as happy as I thought he was. It wasn’t like I wanted Gerard to be despondent or anything, it was just that I wanted him to care a little. I cared too much, I knew I did, but I was slowly learning.

“Erm,” he said awkwardly, “when did you get your nose pierced?”

I touched the new ring awkwardly still avoiding eye contact. My parents had been less than happy with my new appearance but after refusing to take it out for the tenth time, they’d finally given in. If my scary mother could not get me to change it, then Gerard stood no hope.

“Saturday,” I replied bluntly. For someone who I had exhausted conversations with for days at a time, I really had no clue what to say to him. Every time I looked at him, I couldn’t control myself from thinking about the way he kissed me so it was just easier not to.

“Oh,” was all he said before turning back to his worksheet.

And that was it for 5 more days. It appeared that he was back in the phase of barely acknowledging me and when he did, it was to copy my notes or something. He still seemed like there was something bugging him, but he’d long given up on me. As much as it hurt, the pain was becoming a familiar thing with how often he was doing this to me. I physically could not survive another round of this so I vowed to stay well away from him, maybe even for good. It wasn’t like I had stopped loving him, far from it, it’s just I was running myself into the ground with caring about him. His world was heavy and my shoulders were tired at helping carry it, especially when he seemed to toss the weight carelessly to me.

I had long ago given up on our Friday nights together, and he appeared to have done the same. I thought that maybe, this was it. Our friendship should have died with a bang a long time ago and we shouldn’t have forced it to suffer this undignified death this late on. My friends laughed for a bit but soon learnt that the best thing for me was to not mention him at all. Instead, we busied ourselves with football and music, reuniting my connection to my new hobbies without a stronger love grabbing all of my attention.   
“So boys, what are we doing tonight?” Nathan asked, “another FIFA night?”  
“Sounds good with me,” I confirmed not really wanting to be alone. It was when I only had my own company that I could not stop thinking about him and I was over that.   
“Sweet, James have you got a free house?” He asked.  
“Yeah, come around after six,” James confirmed, flashing me one of his magnificent grins.

I had learnt to busy myself in my food or school work in the hall to avoid the way Gerard paraded Amber around like a fucking show horse. It was easier that way because I didn’t get hurt but I also avoided Hannah’s glare at me. I genuinely thought she believed I had fucked her off for another girl, but the truth was so different from that. I still felt guilty that I had kissed her back a little, but I felt it did not deserve the obsessive hatred she had gained for me.   
“She’s _weird_ ,” James giggled from next to me, looking where Hannah was staring again, “you dodged a bullet there.”  
“Tell me about it,” I buried my head further in my sports worksheet. If this awkward love fucking dodecahedron thing had given me anything, it was that my homework was always finished way earlier than it was supposed to as there were too many people I was trying to avoid by doing it.   
——

“James, which one should I wear?” I asked him as he relaxed on my bed whilst I decided on a hoodie to wear for the evening. My favourite one, Gerard’s black North Face one, was thrown deep into my laundry basket away from my thoughts. I held up the black Arctic Monkey’s one or the grey Nike one but had already made up my mind. I wanted something that couldn’t remind me of Gerard so any chav brand was out of the question and James appeared to agree.  
“Arctic Monkeys obviously,” he rolled his eyes at me. “Why do you care anyway? It’s not like you’re trying to impress anyone there, is it?”  
“How do you know I’m not?” I raised an eyebrow, toying with him.  
“What? Who?” He responded, a little awkwardly.   
“Kenny, obviously!” I fake swooned making him half smile. I didn’t know what had been wrong with him but he’d been a little distant sometimes. I figured it had been the way I had accidentally blamed him for exposing me but he told me it wasn’t. He just said he was stressed but I fucking wish someone would tell me what he was worried about.   
“Franks,” he said, quickly changing the subject.  
“Yeah, Jam?”  
“Got you something!” He shot off the bed going over to the bag he had brought over ready for our night at his house. It seemed a little pointless that he came to my house before we went back to his once his parents left, but I think he understood I didn’t want to be alone. He only emphasised how much he truly cared about me when he tossed me a pack of strawberry gummies that I’d made a vague comment about craving earlier in the day.  
“You’re the fucking best!” I grinned at him tackling him into a big hug.  
“Get off!” He giggled but made no attempts to let me go. Instead, he pulled me in tighter, leaving us both awkwardly staring at each other on my bed.  
“Erm,” I mumbled, “should we go to your house then?”  
“Erh, yeah!” He said quickly dropping his arms from around me and jumping to his feet.

——-

“Pass to me!” Matt said, getting more and more worked up. He was getting so invested in the electronic game of football that he had risen to his knees and I think he was pretty close to throwing the remote at James’ expensive TV.  
“Matt, calm down!” Harry giggled but contradicted himself when he cried out in happiness when he scored against his best friend.  
“Cheat!” Matt protested  
“No! I didn’t cheat did I, Frank?”  
“Nah, he didn’t cheat,” I confirmed much to Matt’s annoyance.  
“Well, Franks not very good at recognising cheaters is he?” Matt scowled at me.  
“Too fucking soon,” Kenny grimaced at the now awkward atmosphere.  
“Nah, it’s fine,” I nodded “Matts just upset because he sucks at virtual soccer as well as real-life soccer.”   
“It’s good to have this Frank back, not the lovesick one,” Nathan grinned at me.  
“Oh no, he’s dead and buried!” I lied undetectably. My fake smile was so well rehearsed that I think even Leonardo DiCaprio would have been jealous of my acting ability.

——-

When the night died down a little, me and James went and sat outside on his swing for a while to cool down. Five boys crammed into one room playing a high energy game meant that it had gotten stuffy and I needed some fresh air. I could only be around Matts grotesque smelling feet for so long. It was late, way past 12, but I hadn’t cared to look. I was enjoying just spending time with James and arguing whether we were actually seeing the plough constellation or not. It made me a little scared knowing that Gerard was under the same night sky because with nightfall, always came his Mr Hyde personality. I tried my hardest not to think of him, but it was hard extinguishing a habit that had been so prominent in my life for so long. Instead, I looked at James. I felt bad, his eyes look sleep deprived and he was gnawing on his bottom lip like he was trying to stop himself from speaking his truths. I mean, he had a lot of truths to tell me because I did not know how he had put up with my bitching for this long.   
“How are things with you, Jam?” I asked cautiously. I felt guilty, he had spent so long asking about my life I had accidentally neglected his a little.   
“Fine, just stressed,” He sighed.  
“What are you stressed about?” I dared to question him, “everyone keeps saying that but no one will tell me why!”  
“because it doesn’t matter to you!”  
“It does! I love you so fucking much, I care about your problems, dude.” I tried my best to reassure him so he would open up.  
“It’s just hard to tell you,” he mumbled fiddling with his hoodie string, stuffing it in his mouth to chew on.  
“What, harder than confessing to you that I’ve been in love with my best friend for longer than I care to admit?” I attempted to joke to make him feel better.  
“You’d be surprised, Franks,” He half laughed at something he didn’t seem to find funny.  
“Well, let me be surprised then! I’m not going to judge you whatever it is!” My thoughts raced on what could possibly be wrong in James’ life enough to bother him this much. He was beautiful, athletic, smart and rich with a million people chasing him; I was running out of things that could be wrong with him.  
“I’m just lonely, I think,” he confessed.  
“James! You have a million people wanting to get to know you, I just thought that-“  
“Frank,” he interrupted. “You can have the whole world wanting to know your name but it doesn’t matter if it’s not that one person, if that makes any sense.”  
I mean it did. I wasn’t exactly snowed under with requests of people wanting to be with me, but I could never share the excitement with my friends when it did happen because the person had never been Gerard.  
“Yeah,” I breathed out slowly, watching the frost exhale from my mouth as if it was smoke. I hated smoking, but I could sure have done with a cigarette for the depth of the conversation.   
“Like, I’m so fucking lonely sometimes, but those people aren’t enough for me. I know it’s wrong but I’m just waiting around for something that’s not going to happen, I guess.”   
“Wait, you like someone?” I frowned. It was news to me, I mean James rarely even spoke of girls let alone got attached to one. I tried to think of all the girls I’d seen him hang around and failed to remember one significant enough to him that could have made him like that.  
“A bit, I think,” he shuffled in the chair awkwardly causing it to swing a little.  
“Who?  
“Nah, just leave it.”  
“James! I told you!”  
“Yeah but this is different!” He tried to argue even though I couldn’t see how it was worse than being in love with Gerard.  
“No! I promise James I’m never going to judge you for what you tell me,”  
“Well,” he closed his eyes and took a deep breath. At that moment, my phone started playing that specific ring tone I had saved for only my favourite person.

“ _you could save me from the way I tend to be_ ,” my phone blared from my pocket. I had chosen that song for Gerard because of that night at the gig that had stuck so vividly in my head. I had programmed it so it was the ring tone only associated with Gerard’s name which had made me happy until I had started hearing it less and less. I had tried not to look at my phone too much, I did not want to see anything to do with him. To hear his ringtone was the last thing I expected at 1 AM on Saturday morning though. I blinked awkwardly at James as if my phone wasn’t repeatedly going off, unsure of what to do.  
“Answer it,” he mumbled, “I know that’s what you want to do.”  
I had never felt so torn. I wished I was strong enough to cancel the call and carry on with my quiet evening but this was so out of character that it felt wrong. Even when we were friends, he’d never call me so late if he was out. I knew he was partying because Nathan had seen it on Instagram that they were at some house party which I think was Joe’s. I awkwardly thumbed the device in my pocket as it went off for the third time with the same ringtone.  
“James-“  
“Answer it!” He almost snapped at me and suddenly I didn’t need any more encouragement. I shot to my feet and slid the answer bar across to hear the loud thumping of bass from the receiver.  
“Hello?” I said loudly as all I could hear was muffled yells. I pressed my other ear closed to try and hear better and was met with a person I had not been expecting.  
“Frank? Thank fuck!” The unfamiliar voice said to me.  
“Who is this?” I frowned although the person could not see me.  
“It’s Ross! Look you have to come quickly somethings wrong,” he sounded distressed which made my heart lurch into my throat with panic. What if he had done it? What if he was in real trouble this time?  
“What? What the fucks wrong?” I asked desperately.  
“I don’t know, Frank! He took something and he won’t calm down!”  
Ah shit.   
“What did he take?” I asked if I was his own personal 999 dispatcher or something.  
“Acid, I think, I don’t know! He’s just breathing funny and he won’t calm down and I didn’t know who else to call!”  
“Okay, just tell him that I’m coming. Get him some water and tell him to breathe, yeah?”  
“Yeah okay.”  
“I’m on my way!” I said already attempting to open James’ patio door to no avail.  
“Hurry!” He cried desperately before the phone call had ended abruptly.

“What’s wrong?” James frowned.  
“He’s having a panic attack and I don’t trust Joe to fix him, he needs me to fix him, James!” I cried desperately trying to prise the glass doors open.  
“Hey!” He said calmly pushing my hands away, “are you really going to go running to him after all this?”  
“I love him, James,” I said weakly, almost pleading with him to help me get to Gerard quicker. It was not his first panic attack and it would not be his last but with the fear in Ross’ voice, I just had a bad feeling about it.   
“No, right, of course,” he seemed to snap out of whatever was holding him back, “sorry."  
He quickly opened the door and I barely turned back to thank him.  
“I promise you we can carry on our conversation tomorrow or something! I promise, Jam!” I called already pulling my trainers on.  
“Yeah, course,” he sighed. I felt guilty, I really did but I couldn’t help the chilling fear running down my spine for the boy that I loved.

With that, I ran out of the door without proper goodbye’s and took the unfamiliar route to Joe’s house.


	27. We talk about the weather, and how she drowns her pain in drink, And I nod and never ever dare to tell her what I think

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> This chapter is looooong I'm sorry but stay with it for some fluff at the end haha
> 
> The song for this chapter is one of my favourites ever and these are the significant lyrics I love;  
> But she never seems to see  
> That it’s not about the days when everything has turned out right,  
> No it’s more about the moments when she calls me in the night  
> To make her cups of tea and wash the weary worries from her head  
> And then to draw the pain out slowly as I put her into bed.
> 
> And I slip this information  
> Into all our conversations  
> But she never seems to listen  
> And she never seems to see.
> 
> (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VxcGw7ZPhX4)

I stood outside what appeared to be Joe’s house, looking up at it in the cloudy night sky. Gerard had stopped by to pick something up a few times with me in the car but I was still surprised I was able to find it so quickly; I guess it was my survival instinct though. If it weren’t for the bounding bass practically making the house vibrate and the smoke infiltrating out onto the street, I think I would have struggled to remember which one it even was. There was abandoned scrap metal thrown about in his front yard, the grass long overgrown with neglect. There were also drunken bodies thrown all over the outside of the house, making me fail to see what was so enjoyable about this. I hated the fact Gerard was trapped in that toxic place, and as much as I wanted to run home and forget about it, I couldn’t bring myself to leave him there. I hated to admit that I was scared, fucking terrified in fact. It just spurred me on that I had an even bigger fear about losing him.

“Gross,” I mumbled to myself as some girl, too unstable to stand, narrowly missed my feet with her cheap vodka scented vomit. I vaguely recognised her from school, she was definitely younger than us and did not belong in a place like this. Her head was lolling back and forth against the wall and guys watched her like vultures leaving me feeling uneasy.  
“Erm, do you want me to call someone?” I crouched next to her and said calmly, despite my racing heart.  
“What the fuck are you doing here?” I heard a voice boom from behind me. I quickly had to forget about the girl as I felt a sharp shove from the man himself; Joe Delo.  
“Where’s Gerard, Joe?” I frowned, not in the mood to play about with something so serious.  
“Why do you give a fuck? Leave him alone, he doesn’t want you here!” Although the comment stung, I could not just walk away. Joe always tried to mess with peoples head and he was extremely good at succeeding in it. There had been many times I’d believed his cruel words and let them hold me back. I didn’t want to give into him tonight though; I was going to get to Gerard if it killed me.  
“Where is he?” I repeated more forcefully.  
“Frank,” he tutted, “do you not see that he doesn’t want to be around a nobody like you? He chose me! He’s always going to because you’re a fucking obsessed head case! So take your Arctic Monkey’s hoodie and fuck off.”  
He was guarding his front door like a troll guarding a bridge. I was trying my hardest to get past him but he was bigger than me leaving me hopeless. I felt like prince fucking charming trying to break down the wall of thorns to where Gerard was being locked away, but it seemed impossible. That was until I remembered something in the back of my mind that Gerard had vaguely told me a few weeks before.  
“Let me in,” I said more assertively than before, “or I tell everyone about the way you got your ass kicked by that guy Alex is seeing.”  
“How the fuck do you know anything about Alex?” He glared at me as if I’d just pulled out a gun or something. In a way, I had done because there was nothing Joe was more scared of than looking weak; even death.  
“Because, Joe, he’ll always pick me,” I smirked at him, enjoying the power. I didn’t even believe the statement myself, but I knew it got inside his head. I could see him internally battling his beliefs because he thought Gerard would never betray him like that.  
“If you’re not out of my house in 10 minutes, then I’ll fucking kill you,” he said shockingly cool. His words were so cold, they made me shiver. I did not even doubt his words which scared me, but I loved Gerard so much that I had to at least try to save him. With his chilling statement, he reluctantly let me through to a scene that would have made a Skins party look tame. There were body’s conjoined everywhere, almost as if I was walking in on a porn scene. There was no love here, there were just drug fuelled flings with cold, unfeeling eyes. The room smelled of marijuana so strongly I had to pull my hoodie over my nose to keep a clear head. The lights were off with only green lasers shooting from the cheap lights to illuminate the room. Being in a place like this made me thankful it wasn’t me. I found it almost depressing to be here, like every second I breathed the toxic air in, the more of my soul got ripped away from me. I looked around desperately trying to find the mop of black hair but the lack of lightning was not making it an easy task. I couldn’t even ask anybody because they were all like brain dead zombies who barely knew their own names let alone where Gerard was.  
“Frank!” I heard from the stairs, despite the music being deafeningly loud. It was like I’d manage tune out all the bullshit to find him like I was superhuman or something or like my name was being called by a siren. I span around to see Ross waving frantically at me, ushering me to come up the stairs. I battled my way through the drunken bodies to reach the rickety wooden stairs, developing strength I didn’t even know I possessed.  
“Where is he?” I almost cried out when I reached Ross. I’d become desperate for him like I’d lost him in a big crowd or something just when I needed him the most. I was frantic with worry, aching to comfort him. I couldn’t believe he’d been so stupid, he knew what his mental health was like. I couldn’t be mad at him though, I just needed to find him.  
“Come this way,” Ross said pulling my arm harshly. He dragged me up the stairs and down a dark hallway to a small door at the end.  
“I didn’t know where to take him without Delo seeing, so I just left him in the storage room,” Ross said completely torn. On one hand, I couldn’t believe that he had been stupid enough to leave someone alone when they were having a drug fuelled panic attack but on the other, I was grateful because I would have never found him if he hadn’t. “It’s bad, Frank,” he warned me as I was about to go into the tiny room.  
“I’ll get through it,” I took a deep breath before turning the tarnished brass door knob into whatever the fuck awaited me.

The room was smaller than I thought and I felt even more claustrophobic when I closed the door behind me. It was pitch black, the only sign that he was even here at all was the laboured breaths from the corner of the room. I quickly fumbled with my phone to turn the torch on where the room became partially illuminated in a harsh way, leaving me with enough light to see his shaking, huddled form.  
“Gerard,” I said weakly but was met with no response. “Gerard!” I repeated with a little more force. With that, he snapped his neck around and my heart just ached for him. I was half expecting to see that cocky dickhead persona who was just a little bit high, but I couldn’t have been more wrong. His eyes were wide with fear and he was trembling as if it was freezing in the room, despite it being incredibly stuffy. He had vomit dribbling from his bottom lip as if he had even lost the ability to care that it was there. When he looked at me, all I saw was that terrified young boy who he had tried to bury deep within his unconscious mind a long time ago. I had never seen him so weak, and I quickly realised that it was never what I wanted. When he’d hurt me, I though I wished this kind of suffering on him, but it only left a horrible pain in my chest.  
“ _G_ ,” I said for the third time, daring to reach out at touch his trembling shoulder.  
“F-F,” he attempted but could not finish with the way he was shaking as if a chill had reached the very core of his bones.  
“Hey, I’m here, man,” I shuffled closer to him, falling onto my knees to be more on his level. “Shh, it’s okay, I’m here,”  
I reached out for him so slowly with attempts not to scare him. This was unlike any panic attack I’d ever seen him have before. If I was not so in love with him, I could have run away in fear. I knelt down next to him, cautiously putting my arm around him.  
“It’s me G, it’s your bug,” I attempted to bring him some familiarity which appeared to work a little because he just seemed to collapse from the tense position he had been holding. He fell back on me with such force that he knocked me completely to the floor, collapsing into me. I wrapped my arms tightly around him and shushed into his hair whilst he sobbed harder than I had ever heard him before. It was a strange event, because I had not seen Gerard cry since he broke his arm when we were 12. Even on the cruellest of days when we were in school, he’d never give in. It’s like he’d learnt to ignore his emotions so well that he had acted like he didn’t care all the time. He thought that to be a good thing but I think it had made him so he could not physically love anything as well. If you tune out of your emotions that much, of course, you’re never going to possess the ability to care about anything. I clutched his head so close to my chest as my hoodie became wet with salty tears, making me never want to let go.  
“Just breathe, yeah?” I said softly, even though I felt anything but incredibly panicked. I was out of my depth here, but I knew he would have slaughtered me if I got professional help. If they found out he did drugs, then his mother would suffer and he never wanted that to happen. Plus, his dad had threatened him with being kicked out if he ever touched them so I couldn’t do that to him. No, instead we would ride this out together.  
We were both quiet for a long time, the only sound coming from outside as well as his whimpers. The only thing I could do to comfort him was to rock him slowly and remind him I was never going to leave him. I had been dumb before, I was never going to abandon him. Never fucking ever. I feared if I wasn’t around, then this would be his bleak future forever.  
“ _They’re_ coming,” He said out of nowhere. His voice came out jittery and weak with his awkward, panicked breaths.  
“Who’s coming, G?” I asked him desperately.  
“Coming to get y-you,” he clutched me tighter as if someone was going to rip me out of his grip.  
“No ones coming, G,” I reassured him “it’s just the drugs.”  
“No,” he whimpered, burying his face further in my neck. It was a little awkward because he was taller than me, but he had bunched himself up so tightly it seemed to fit perfectly. “Don’t leave me.”  
“I’m never going to fucking leave you, I fucking love you,” I said forcefully pressing my lips tightly to his sweat-soaked forehead.  
“My bug,” he sighed unhappily before resuming his sobs on my chest.

I thought he was calming down because his breaths were getting slower. All of his sudden, he shot away from me causing me to snap my head up in confusion. He left my chest feeling bare, but with the way my heart was hammering, I didn’t care.  
“No, no, no,” he began yelling, putting his head in his hands.  
“What?” I begged, going closer causing him to jump away.  
“ _They’re_ coming!” He began pulling at his hair harshly, worry so deep in his eyes that it almost made me scared.  
“Listen to me, G,” I went over to him and forcefully grabbed his head to look at me. The way his eyes met my own would have been enough to kill me if I was not so dead set on calming him down. “No one is coming, it’s just those stupid drugs you took! Why did you take them when you know you have anxiety, you idiot?” I couldn’t help my anger coming out.  
“Anxiety is a secret,” he said and I felt dumb. Of course, he couldn’t tell Joe about how much he suffered, and he was so under his spell, obviously he was going to do whatever he told him to do. He began breathing heavily, wheezing as if his chest was constricting.  
“Breathe with me, G, come on look at me!” I begged inhaling and exhaling slowly to demonstrate. Gradually, he started to copy me, which may have been comical if I wasn’t so fucking scared he was going to die. “Good boy,” I brought our foreheads together, both of my hands grabbing either side of his face.

Once his breaths had calmed back down, I heard the door open. It made me fearful until I saw Ross shuffle awkwardly in.  
“How is he?” He asked apprehensively as if he wasn’t in the room. It probably looked weird to him, Gerard was back to clinging to my chest, begging me silently to make it all go away.  
“He’s been better,” I stroked his back.  
“I’ve been asking around and some people saw him take some pills as well, I don’t know, but he’s drank a lot too,” Ross confirmed crouching down next to Gerard not being sure what to do.  
“Gerard, man!” I whined. “Where’s the bathroom?”  
“Don’t leave me here! Just piss in a cup or something!” Ross begged completely misunderstanding what I was meaning.  
“No he needs to get rid of all the booze and stuff,” I said sighing at his incapability. “G, I need you to put your hood up and stand up for me, okay?”  
He silently complied and let me pull his hood tightly over his head and drag him to his feet.  
“Right, Ross, you go first and I’ll follow with him. We’ve just got to keep him out of Joe’s way.”  
“Sure,” he agreed. He apprehensively left the closet before giving me the nod to follow him. Dragging Gerard through the sea of people was like trying to carry a corpse. He was almost a dead weight which I was struggling to support by myself. The sudden load of people I knew were going to send him into sensory overload but I needed to get rid of the toxins in his stomach.  
“Gerard?” I head a shrill voice from behind us, “wait, Frank, what are you doing here?”  
I span around, keeping Gerard’s head tightly hidden in my neck away from his girlfriends demanding gaze.  
“Just leave him for a bit,” I said hurriedly before mustering the strength to drag him the last few steps to the bathroom.

The bright florescent lights of the bathroom only illuminated the fear on Gerard’s face more. I was scared for him and I felt as if I was out of my depth. I couldn’t just give up on him though, he meant too much to me.  
“Erh, you might wanna leave this ain’t gonna be pretty,” I said awkwardly to Ross who was hovering on the side of the bath as I dragged Gerard to slump over the toilet.  
“I’m not leaving!” He said forcefully and I didn’t have the energy to argue with him. I barely trusted the guy but I was just going to have to put my faith in him in that moment.  
“Fine, can you get me some water for him then?”  
“Yes,” he replied quickly grabbing an abandoned red cup from the side and washing it out so nothing could poison his friend’s body further.  
“Okay, G, I fucking love you and this is why I’m doing this,” I visibly squirmed before jamming two of my fingers down his throat. I had never been the best at dealing with vomit, but it felt different with him. I loved him so much that I didn’t care how pathetic this was, I just needed to fix him in any way that I could. I felt the muscles in his throat contract around my fingers until I finally heard him start gagging.  
“Thatta boy,” I said a little facetiously as he started to violently bring up the sins from the night. He was painfully retching and all I could do was sit behind him and stroke his back.  
“Here, sip it don’t gulp it,” I said accepting the water Ross was handing me and shoving little mouthfuls down Gerard’s throat.

When I was finally satisfied that he had thrown up everything in his stomach, I finally let him collapse backwards. He knocked me over again against the bath as he just lay on my chest, still shivering, breathing heavily and occasionally weeping into me. It was an improvement though, he wasn’t quite as manic as he had been before.  
“Woah, you’re good at this,” Ross came and sat next to me, stroking Gerard’s back with a genuine concern I hadn’t thought he had possessed.  
“Nah, I’m just good with him,” I mumbled tangling my fingers in Gerard’s sweat soaked hair.  
“You really care about him, don’t you?” He frowned.  
“More than anything,” I sighed in defeat.  
“I’m sorry, Frank,” he said barely above a whisper.  
“For what?”  
“I’m sorry that I failed him. I’m sorry I was ever a dick to you and I’m sorry I let Joe take him away from you,” his words seemed genuine and I was suddenly thankful that Ross had been there for him all along, even when I hadn’t thought it.  
“It’s okay and you didn’t fail him,” I attempted to cheer him up “you saved him.”  
“No! I knew he was on those antidepressants so I shouldn’t have let him do that tab!” He said obviously angry with himself.  
“He told you about his pills?” I raised an eyebrow because Gerard was very closed off about his mental illness; especially to his other friends.  
“I saw him taking them, but I’m not as dumb as they think, Frank. I knew he was suffering from the day Joe brought that chubby weirdo to come and sit with us,”  
“I don’t get it, like why did Joe even do that in the first place?”  
“Fuck knows, I think he saw him as some kind of project. We all just let it go too far. He's not a toy, he's a real fucking person.”  
I silently agreed because it was partly my fault too, I should have tried harder to stop their friendship. I knew I hated Joe from the moment I saw Gerard with him, but I hadn’t even attempted to stop it because I was just selfish. I had been too busy playing soccer with my new friends to hear he was screaming out for help in those pent up art rooms.  
“I failed him too,” I sighed unhappily.  
“Nah, he loves you,” Ross smiled a little sadly, “more than Joe or Amber or anyone.”  
“Well, I just wish he’d stop letting them both make wrong decisions for him then,”  
“It’s Joe, isn’t it? He can be persuasive.”  
“Why are you friends with him, Ross? He treats you like shit!”  
“Because,” he sighed “no matter how shit he can make you feel, he can also be the best friend in the whole world. It’s weird.”  
“Nah I get it,” I looked down at my own shivering best friend. “I got you wrong Ross, I’m sorry.”  
“Me too Frank, me too.”

We managed to drag Gerard back to the closet away from people pounding on the door to use the bathroom. He’d resumed his position on my chest as Ross stayed with the two of us. I hadn’t realised that Ross actually liked soccer almost as much as I did and had said he wished he’d joined the team. He said he hadn’t because Joe had told him not too; obviously.  
“You can always try out now,” I tried to encourage him, something that I don't think anyone had ever done before.  
“You only have one tournament left!”  
“Yeah, but we’ll be back at Christmas and Easter. My team is never gonna die, Ross.”  
“Okay, I’ll think about it, I really will.”  
With that, we carried on a discussion about all of our favourite teams and players waiting until Gerard became a little more lucid.

  
“Fuck,” I mumbled blinking awake from my awkward sleep. My neck had gone crooked with the position I was in and my whole bottom half was numb with Gerard’s weight. He wasn’t sleeping like Ross and I had been, instead, he was staring blankly at the wall, fat dribbles of tears still falling down his face. “You should have woke me up, G! I would have spoken you through this bad trip!”  
He just responded by despondently shaking his head, making my heart cry out for him more. I blinked viciously at the harshness that my phone made when I clicked it on to see the time. It was 3:30 AM but the night showed no signs of being over.  
“Home,” he sighed, making me jump.  
“You want me to take you home, G?”  
“No, your home.”  
“You want me to take you to my house?”  
He didn’t verbally respond, just nodded again.  
“Ross, _pssst_ ,” I said shaking him awake gently.  
“Mmmfph?” Ross mumbled.  
“I’m gonna take him back to mine, okay?”  
“Sounds good, Frank,” he groaned as his limbs cracked with sleep, “m’going home.”  
“Thank you for helping us,” I said sincerely.  
“Anytime, now let’s get this dick head out of here without Joe seeing him!”

It was easier to get Gerard out of the house than we thought because a lot of people were passed out all over the stairs. Also, Ross had found out that Joe was in his bedroom with some girl so he wasn’t going to bother us. Hitting the cold air from the outside seemed to wake Gerard up and he suddenly became a little more alive. He still didn’t have the energy to speak, we just sat him on a wall whilst we waited for our taxi to come. My house wasn’t too far away but I didn’t have the strength both physically or emotionally to carry him home on my own. As I swung my legs against the wall making plaster fall under my feet I took one last look at the hell hole behind us. I never wanted Gerard to come back here but I knew it was futile, all I could do was be here for him every time that he did. Something dragged me from my daydream as I saw a body lying in the overgrown grass behind us. I should have left it alone but I could help going to have a look.  
“Frank, where are you going?” Ross hissed as I walked quickly back near the place to where we had just escaped from. “Joe will see you!”  
“I just- just look after Gerard for a second!” I called as my feet were being dragged back to the front yard. I cautiously approached the body and almost turned away when I saw it was actually two people, thinking I might not want to see what awaited me. I halted though when I saw the same pair of worn Adidas trainers I’d seen earlier in the night, recognising the young girl from before. She had been incredibly out of her face when I had first arrived, but now she was completely passed out. She looked so young, and the guy weirdly kissing her neck, despite her lack of responses, looked so fucking old.  
“What the fuck are you looking at?” He snapped, looking up seeing me stood there awkwardly. I wanted to run back to Gerard but there was something plaguing the back of my mind.  
“Erh, that’s my fucking girlfriend,” I lied quickly, “what the fuck are you doing?”  
“Ah shit,” he mumbled, scrambling to his feet.  
“You need to research consent you sick fuck!” I yelled at him as he ran away into the night sky. I wished I could have done more because it could just have easily of been a different girl on a different weekend but I’d ran out of things I could have done.  
“Hey,” I crouched down to the passed out girl and suddenly realised where I recognised her from. She was the girl that Gerard had been with the night he’d kissed me for the first time. I hated her for it, I really fucking did but I couldn’t just walk away. “You need to get up,” I nudged her gently.  
“Mmm,” she lulled as I tried to drag her to her feet, barely managing it. She was only small but fuck, she was a dead weight. “Who are you?”  
“Doesn’t matter who I am, I just need to get you a taxi home.”  
She was so intoxicated that she didn’t even fight my protests. I only thanked God that it was me who had found her and not someone with darker intentions.  
“Frank, what are you doing with her?” Ross frowned as I staggered back to the wall where they were sat. Gerard was leaning on Ross’ shoulder, completely lost in his own mind.  
“She needs help, Ross.”  
“She’s the girl that stalked Gerard, yano?” He said as I hauled her to sit next to him.  
“What?”  
“They hooked up once and she wouldn’t leave him alone! She’s just attention seeking!”  
“Erh,” I looked between the girl and my best friend. I was furious with her for falling for the person I loved but, I couldn’t blame her. She was from the year below us, probably still clinging on to the hope that she was going to be the one to change Gerard. “I’ll still take her home.”

“Goodbye Florence fucking Nightingale,” Ross said bumping my fist as if I was one of them. Our taxi had arrived so I said my goodbyes to him and hauled the two casualties into the awaiting cab. I thought about sending the girl into her own taxi, but I heard one too many horror stories of people taking advantage in the back of yellow cabs where the drivers were untraceable. After asking a million times I finally managed to get the girl to slur out her address leaving us to take the silent ride to her house. Gerard was looking out the window avoiding everything and I thought he was mad at me for bringing that girl around us, until he snaked his hand over and linked our little fingers loosely. He still wasn’t looking at me as I sat in the middle of him and a drunken girl, but I knew that he was grateful with that one touch.

When we pulled up outside the girl's house, I hauled her to the doorstep. I didn’t really fancy explaining to her parents why she was in such a state because I wasn’t really sure myself. So instead, I rang the doorbell and then sprinted back towards the taxi. We waited around the corner until I saw who I assumed to be her mother drag her inside with annoyance, but at least she was safe. It was way past 5 AM now and the morning birds were beginning to chirp, all I could think about was bed though. I thanked God I didn’t have soccer practice in two hours like I usually did.

“Thank you,” I said sleepily to the taxi driver as I paid the expensive fair with the change I’d scraped together out of my jean pockets. “Come on, G.”  
I went over to the other side and dragged him out of the cab. I could tell he was sobering up a little because he was leaning on me a little less than he had been before. It was more like he was holding on to me because he wanted me next to him, rather than for support.  
“ _Shhh_ ,” I reminded him as I slowly unlocked my front door, pulling him inside with me. It was weird to see my house lit in the dusk like that as I only usually saw it like that when we had extra early practices. It wasn’t like me to be sneaking in the house with an extremely intoxicated Gerard at 5 AM. I was only thankful that I told my mom I’d be sleeping at James’ so that she had not been waiting up for me.  
“Come here,” I sighed to him once we reached my bedroom. I had never seemed him look so defeated, almost like he was barely breathing. I couldn’t help but wrap him in the tightest hug that I had ever given him before. He weakly hugged me back, sniffling into my hair as if he was still upset. He’d finally stopped crying after becoming like a toddler who had just finished having a tantrum as his breaths became shaky with exhaustion.  
“Love you,” he sighed unhappily into me.  
“I love you more,” I reached up and pressed a messy kiss to his cheek. There were no intentions behind it, it had been an action I had done many times before to comfort him. Instead of freaking out as I had half expected him to do, he just smiled for the first time all evening.  
“Impossible,” he added; if only he knew the weight of my words. My love for him was like an ice berg, only a little bit of it poking out the top of the water. The rest of it was buried deep under murky, cold water that he would never be able to see.  
“Are they wearing off?” I asked.  
“Little bit, I mean the walls are still moving but I just feel sad now not panicky,” he said unhappily.  
“Well, I know what’ll cheer you up!”  
“What?”  
“Sit down,” I pushed him back on to the edge of my bed as I busied myself in my drawers. It took a while to find them, but I eventually pulled out his worn favourite pyjamas that he’d left at mine. They were old, which was made obvious by the giant Blink 182 logo adorning them, a band he had not even mentioned in years.  
“Fuck,” he said weakly at them, but a little smile covered his lips. “I can’t believe you still have them.”  
“Why would I not?” I frowned “they were your favourite, G.”  
“Because, I thought that maybe you didn’t love me anymore, not like you used to.”  
“Don’t be fucking stupid!” I almost yelled at his bizarre statement, “Of course I love you! You got sick all down my favourite hoodie plus, I rammed my fingers down your throat so don’t you dare ever question my loyalty to you!”  
My response caused a little smile on his face, again.  
“You stole my hoodie, I puke on yours. Oh, and you did punch me in the face last weekend.”  
“Fair enough,” I shrugged “now chuck these on so I can put you into bed.”  
“You do it,” he sighed throwing himself back onto my bed.  
“Erm, okay,” I replied awkwardly as I knelt down and began untying his shoe laces. I carefully took them and his socks off, placing them neatly to the side before taking a deep breath and unbuckling his belt to his jeans. It was so weird taking them off, pulling them carefully over his boney hips, causing me to stare at the prominent V shaped muscles just above his underwear. I didn’t dare take them off as well, instead, I pulled the worn plaid pants over his boxers. I straddled his waist to take off his shirt, whilst he made the bare minimum effort to help me. He hauled himself upwards so that his elbows supported him but left me to do all the work of pulling his hoodie off. I took it off slowly, leaving us awkwardly staring at each other as I threw it to the side. His eyes looked all over my face as mine did to his, never quite breaking the silence. It was when he glanced at my lips that I freaked out. It reminded me too much of the Saturday before, that I panicked and shot off his body simply tossing the pyjama shirt at him instead of placing it on him.  
“What?” He said self consciously.  
“Socks! Just getting you some bed socks!” I said quickly before finding a pair of fluffy grey socks and passing them to him. “Now get into bed!”

I pushed him into bed and tucked him in tightly.  
“Erm excuse me,” he tapped his cheek with his finger tip.  
“Fucks sake!” I fake complained but pressed a small kiss on his cheek where he had indicated for me to do it.  
“Where are you going?” He freaked out a little and frantically grabbed my arm as I went to get out of bed.  
“Turning the lights off!” I reassured him, “I’m not going anywhere!” I turned them off and then crawled into bed next to him, unsure of what quite to say to him. It appeared I didn’t have to speak as we both lay on our sides to face each other, he linked his hand with mine. It was dark so I couldn’t really see him, it was only his shaky breaths and his hand gripping my own that let me know he was there.

“I’m so sorry, Frankie,” he whispered into the darkness, “I fucked up really bad this time.”  
“Yeah but there’s going to be times I’m going to fuck up too, and you’re going to be there for me as well.”  
“I’m never leaving your side, you’re stuck with me for life.”  
“Ah, that’s a shame,” I said sarcastically, enjoying his half-hearted giggle.

We didn’t speak again, just stared at each other in the darkness as my eyes adjusted to it slightly. It should have been awkward considering what had happened the week before, but it just wasn’t. I could barely see him, but his eyes said all that I needed to know. I wasn’t even aware of how it happened but we had both been subconsciously moving closer to one another, and we had become so close I could feel his warm breath on my lips. I wasn’t even sure what I was doing, it was almost as if I was the intoxicated one. I felt him shuffle the last inch between us, meaning he was so close that we were now touching. He nuzzled his nose against mine, making my insides squirm with anticipation. It was like neither of us knew what to do, we just awkwardly rubbed noses until he ever so slightly lifted his head up. With his action meant that his bottom lip grazed my top one so softly I barely even knew it had happened. He took me completely by surprise however, by doing it again a little harder. The action left the noise of his lips parting in the air, making my brain fizz. He continued to rub his nose against mine, placing soft kisses on my lips every so often. I had been somewhat frozen, my mind clouding over so much, I’d barely been able to move.  
“Don’t,” I mumbled into the darkness, shocking myself with my own words.  
“S-sorry,” he whispered back.  
“No, I meant don’t do it if you’re going to leave me again, I can’t take it,” I begged him, unconsciously squeezing his hand to reiterate my words. I was terrified of being so open to him, but I couldn’t just physically leave it any longer. He couldn’t kiss me for the third time and me just leave it be. I needed answers or otherwise I was going to go insane with wonder.  
“I promise,” he whispered into the darkness, “just, please… I need to kiss-“ and with that, he pressed his lips on my own again. It was soft and contrasted harshly to the way he had kissed me the week before. It felt as if he was barely there at all, he just stayed there, lips only barely parted, unmoving. It seemed like we were both terrified, but neither of us wanted to stop.  
“Gerard,” I said awkwardly, pulling back from his slightly. It was only a minuscule amount though, because as I spoke, his lip still tickled my own.  
“What?”  
“This feels weird.”  
“Oh,” he said like he was saddened by my statement. I couldn’t bear to hear any more unhappiness in his voice, it was killing me.  
“I just mean that you’re drunk, high and sad. I don’t think you really want to kiss me, I think you’re just lonely,” I sighed into my confession.  
“I am all those things,” he nuzzled my nose again “but I really fucking want to kiss you.”  
With his words, all the barriers I’d built to protect myself fell down, clattering like rubble at our feet. I leaned forward and kissed him like I’d always dreamed of doing, and fuck, it felt better than I could have ever imagined. I balled my fist in his pyjama shirt to bring him closer as I worked my lips against his own. Our lips were slightly parted, but it never went further than that. Instead, our legs began to intertwine and our socked feet rubbed together.  
“Fucking bed socks,” he smirked against my lips, humming happily into me.  
“Fucking bed socks.” I simply repeated back kissing him again, chastely.


	28. She woke up screaming in the middle of the night, terrified of her own insides

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> ***** IMPORTANT TRIGGER WARNING **** - there is a mention to previous self harm in this chapter but I know it can be shitty to read about for some people so I'm going to write **TW** at the start and end just incase you don't want to read that bit :)
> 
> Also (this isn't important so you can stop reading this if you don't care haha) I'm REALLLLY sorry about not updating this for a while I just had a shitty weekend and it was difficult writing such fluff when I felt like kicking someone in the face lol.. But I've had a chapter 24 Frank kind of breakdown and got spontaneous lip fillers and bleached my hair so hopefully things will resume as normal.  
> So yeah, sorry if this chapter is shit I tried my best with a cute situation and hope the next few chapters make up for it :)

  
Nothing happened that night apart from a few light kisses. We were both exhausted, me with lack of sleep and him with the abuse he’d put his body through at the party. Thankfully, the drugs left his system enough for him to sleep not long after, even though he had tried to fight it.  
“I wanna kiss you though,” he whined once I’d told him to go to sleep for the third time after he’d yawned again. As much as I wanted to stay awake and embrace every inch of him finally, I knew that his body was crying out for rest. I never let the kiss go further than a few warm pecks because I was still paranoid that it was the drugs making him act on impulse, and did not want to take advantage of him. I loved him so much that I couldn’t bear him to regret this in the morning if it wasn’t what he actually had wanted. Instead, I pulled him onto my chest and stroked his hair until he finally gave into the jumpy sleep. I could see his eyes darting from under his eyelids, almost like the drugs were still in control but it stopped as soon as I kissed his forehead. It was everything I’d imagined and so much more. I had never felt so at peace with myself as when I was holding him like that. I refused to give in to my own tiredness until I was certain that he was definitely going to stay asleep because I didn’t want him to freak out again. Finally though, when I heard him sigh in slumber, completely relaxing into me, I gave in to my own needs.

——

“Frank, are you home?” A soft knock came from the door, waking me from the sleep I wasn’t quite ready to give up on yet. I was shocked awake with the soft calling of my mother and was met by the pain in my bones as I realised that Gerard had slept on me all night. I had been so scared to wake him that I kept perfectly still lying on my back even though I was more of a stomach sleeper myself.  
“Yeah mom,” I responded sleepily as she took my response as an invitation to barge into my bedroom.  
“Oh,” she said confused assessing the scene in front of her. It wasn’t alarming in an affectionate kind of way because she was quite used to me being all over my best friend, I just don’t think she was expecting to see him on a Saturday morning. “I didn’t know Gerard was here, weren’t you supposed to be sleeping at James’ house?” She frowned in confusion.  
“Yeah, but one of the air beds popped,” I said quickly, “and Gerard picked me up and just crashed here.”  
“Ah,” she nodded, believing every lie I was telling her. As much as I wanted to confide in her, I knew she was just going to tell Gerard’s mother, so I couldn’t. “Well, when he’s awake come downstairs and eat something, it’s nearly lunchtime!”  
I reluctantly agreed even though with everything going on, food was the last thing on my mind. I was envious of Gerard sleeping off the events of the night before, I felt like I was still living them.  
“ _Mmfgh_ ,” he mumbled against me suddenly, “feel sick.”  
“Morning,” I nodded at him as he hauled himself up, his beautiful face scrunching up in pain. His hair was completely flat on the side that he had slept on, and the other side looked like had been electrocuted, but he still was hypnotically amazing.  
“Fuck,” he moaned remembering the hazy memories of the night before, “what the fuck happened? Wait no, tell me in a minute.” He suddenly shot to his feet and bolted down the attic stairs to my bathroom. I panicked in case he had not remembered he had kissed me again because I didn’t know how to bring it up to him. I wanted answers. No, in fact, I needed them.

He eventually reappeared looking a little worse for wear. His cheeks had become flushed from the vomiting he had been doing and his eyes were that all too familiar tainted red colour.  
“Better?” I smirked at his stupidity.  
“No, feel like death,” he grumbled quickly diving under the quilts and greedily gulping the water I had left by his side the night before.  
“No, in all seriousness, are you better now?”  
“Erm, I think so, I can’t really remember much. Fuck!” He slapped his forehead harshly, “did I make a tit out of myself?”  
“A bit, I mean I had to stick my fingers down your throat and then you were a bit sick on me but it’s a good job you’re my best friend, right?” I raised an eyebrow to make him feel a bit better about everything by bringing humour into it.  
“Fuck! I’m really sorry, Frank,” he said guiltily, “ah shit, did I cry?”  
“Yeah, like a lot.”  
“How embarrassing!”  
“No!” I reassured him quickly, “it hurt my heart, dude.”  
“Yeah but you’re you, aren’t you? Joe’s going to absolutely slaughter me!” He whined.  
“Joe didn’t see, me and Ross got you out of there before he could.”  
“Ross?” He frowned.  
“Yeah, he was so good with you, G. He stayed with you until I got there and then kept bringing you water and stuff.”  
“I owe him one. Fuck, I owe you one, Franks!” He quickly tackled me into a harsh hug, knocking me back on to the bed. As I looked up at him nervously once we had separated a little, horror clouded his face.  
“No! I’m _SO_ sorry!” He said quickly jumping away from me. “Stupid fucking no good waste of space.” He again slapped his forehead harshly.  
“What?” I asked desperately getting to my knees, thinking maybe he was still tripping or something.  
“I kissed you, again,” he said weakly, not daring to meet my eyes. “You’re my straight, oldest and best friend and I keep fucking it up!”  
“Erm,” I said awkwardly not knowing how to act. I wanted to scream at him that I maybe wasn’t as straight as he thought that I was.  
“I’m so sorry I-“  
Something possessed me. I didn’t know what it was, all I knew was that I needed to shut him up before he broke my poor little scarred heart again. I shot forward and awkwardly pressed my lips to his own. The action had been so quick and hasty that I had landed awkwardly on the corner of his mouth, but it had done the trick. He was so stunned at my actions, that he had completely stopped talking. I mean, I was fucking shocked at myself, it just seemed that my body could no longer hold back from those lips that I now knew I loved more than I could have imagined.  
“Frank,” he said, completely dumbfounded, just blinking at me. “You don’t have to kiss me because you feel sorry for me.”  
“Do you think I would fucking do that?” I scowled at him, begging him to take the lead. I couldn’t read what he was thinking at all. I didn’t know if he wanted to punch me in the face or kiss me back and I just wanted him to let me know so I could stop beating myself up with wonder.  
“I’m so confused,” he sighed in frustration.  
“You’re not the fucking only one,” I mumbled in response to him.  
He sighed heavily.  
“Fuck it,” he shrugged before copying my actions from earlier and lunging forward to kiss me. It had taken us a while, but it appeared that we had finally got the perfect kiss. It was not too light or too harsh, instead, he gently pecked my lips whilst tangling his hand in the longer side of my hair. I couldn’t believe how warm and inviting his lips were, even after the fourth time of this happening. It felt different though, there was no prearrangement, anger or intoxication; we were just kissing.  
“We should go for food before my mom comes back,” I said as he pulled back nervously. I didn’t want this to change things between us, so I said the most mundane, anticlimactic thing I could think of.  
“Okay, but I can’t promise not to throw up all over your kitchen island,” he groaned.

After a breakfast that dragged, we finally escaped upstairs. Gerard didn’t usually eat too much in the mornings anyway, but today was a complete right off. His hangover was making him barely capable of holding a conversation with my parents and I could tell how much he was struggling to not let them spot anything unusual about him.  
“ _Help me_ ,” he mouthed as my father started going off on a tangent about which tyre brand Gerard should go for on his next service. He cautiously snaked his hand under the table and squeezed my own, and I understood his silent plea.  
“Mom, we were up all night playing on my Xbox so I need a nap,” I lied again. I felt bad lying to her, but last nights events weren’t so different to a fucking Grand Theft Auto party anyway so I tried not to feel guilty. I knew I was protecting her by not telling the truth, and most importantly, I was protecting Gerard.  
“You’ve not eaten anything, either of you,” she frowned in that certain way only a mother could master.  
“We’re gonna order something later,” I said quickly dragging Gerard to his feet. Before she could bother us with more questions, we were running up the stairs back to my bed which was calling.  
“Fucking finally!” He sighed happily falling back on to my bed as if he was resting on a cloud or something. “I really really love your parents, man, but I was scared I was going to pass out.”  
“So sleep then!” I laughed at the way his eyes were already closing.  
“Come here,” he mumbled, reaching out for me blindly. Once I finally got close enough for him to grab me, he pulled me down to lie next to me hauling my heavy head onto his shoulder. He pressed a wet kiss onto my forehead as if nothing had changed between us and clutched me whilst his breaths got deeper. I was too excited to sleep because I was lying on his chest. It was a position I had spent nights fantasising about so did not want to miss a single second of it. My lack of sleep from the night before inevitably won though, and before I knew it I was drifting away too.

***** TRIGGER WARNING START *******

I blinked my dry eyes awake, fighting back the sleep that was threatening to close them again. I had already wasted too much time asleep when I didn’t have to dream anymore because he was here. I stretched out, arching my back enjoying the satisfying crack it made as I basked in the afternoon fall sun flooding through my blinds. I didn’t have time to be tired, I just wanted to make sure he was still here. I shot up to see him with his long sleeved shirt pulled up to his elbow staring at his arm with his knees bunched tightly to his chest on the corner of my bed. When he saw I was awake too, he quickly pulled down his sleeve but it was too late, I already knew what he had been looking at.  
“G,” I said shuffling over to him cautiously like he was a deer that I didn’t want to spook or something, my voice still thick with sleep. “I’m not like Joe, you don’t have to hide.”  
It was a declarative statement, but it needed to be. He needed to understand I already knew his past, and despite how much he tried, it wasn’t going to go away.  
“They’re ugly,” he grumbled to himself, internally cursing at his younger self. My heart ached for the young boy he used to be that had felt so low he thought the only way to get that pain out was harming himself. I wished it had been possible for that young boy to see what I had seen. Even back then, I thought he was beautiful, I always had.  
“No!” I said quickly grabbing his arm and bringing it towards me, pulling his sleeve back up. I glanced over the silvery scars that ghosted his arm and traced them lightly with my thumb. They had grown almost undetectable with age but I had known them when they had first appeared; angry and red.  
“Fuck off Frank, this isn’t a Pierce the Veil song.” He smirked at me being completely facetious, but it’s what we needed. Whenever we spoke about his past, he did not like to be serious. He thought that I’d forgotten long ago but I still saw the way he consciously held on to his hoodie sleeves around his friends, as if Joe would ever stop looking at himself long enough to notice the faint marks that littered his arm.  
“I still feel like doing it sometimes,” he sighed deeply, as if what he was unsure of how to verbalise his thoughts. I regretted it as soon as I did it, but he must have seen the panic spread across my face. “I’m not going to!” He added quickly, “I just sometimes… I don’t think I’m better quite yet, bug.”  
“I know,” I pulled his sleeve down for him, trying to stay as calm as I possibly could. “I just hope you don’t forget that.”  
“What do you mean?” He frowned at me.  
“Well, you know when you broke your arm and then you were drawing with it even when the doctor told you not to?”  
“Yeah,” he smiled at his stubborn, younger self fondly for the first time in a while. He hated the boy he used to be, but that didn’t mean that he didn’t sometimes still relate to him.  
“Well, it took longer to heal, didn’t it? So, I just mean, if you’re struggling, don’t push it.”  
“Alright, _mom_ ,” he rolled his eyes at me.  
“Don’t take the piss, G!” I dropped his arm and instead pushed him, eliciting a small giggle from his lips.  
“You shouldn’t worry about me, bug, I don’t like it when you worry.”  
“How can I not worry about you? If you’re not drawing with a broken arm, you’re tripping your balls off on acid.”  
“I keep you on your toes,” he shrugged “what can I say?”  
Fuck, I had never heard him speak words that were truer.

***** TRIGGER WARNING END *****

“ _No the drugs don’t work they just make you worse_ ,” I sang along loudly, toying with Gerard who was glaring at me and my terrible Verve cover. He had gone a little quiet after our kind of serious talk and I had begun to panic that he was freaking out on me again. I hadn’t quite understood fully what was happening, I just knew I liked him being next to me. Whenever I didn’t know what to say, I put music on. That’s how we’d ended up huddled around my laptop playing songs we used to love together, slowly wading through the awkward tension between us.  
“Fuck off,” he grumbled grabbing the laptop from my lap and tossing it towards the end of my bed. I held my breath as he tackled me to the bed as my mind wandered to a potential kiss. I should have been disappointed when instead he began poking my ribs causing me to thrash violently underneath him. I wasn’t even that much of a ticklish person, but Gerard knew exactly what to do to get me acting like I was doing some kind of new break dancing move or something.  
“Stop!” I squealed at him as he pinned my arms harshly above my head with one arm and continued to prod my sides with the other.  
“Not until you stop taking the piss!” He replied, smirking at the power he had over me at that moment. The thing with me and Gerard was that we had always laughed about things that probably shouldn’t have been funny, but it was how we coped. I didn’t want things to change between us like that, I just maybe wanted us to make out a little as well.

It appeared I got what I wanted because not long after he tickled me, he replaced the prods with his soft lips on my own causing me to sigh happily in his mouth. I was freaking out a little, because although he had still been by my side, he hadn’t kissed me since that morning and I wondered if he was changing his mind. The way his open mouth covered my own greedily, I don’t think he was. The kiss had started slowly like before but as he opened his mouth wider, I could only follow. He slipped his tongue past my lips and moved it against my own, making my insides squirm with pleasure. I never knew that kissing someone could feel so good, but fuck, it really was. It had started off awkward as he was straddling my waist with our previous fight, but as the kiss deepened, he started laying his body on top of my own. With one arm he supported himself and with the other, he grabbed my thigh. It wasn’t quite like last time though, although his actions were hurried and eager, there was not the harshness to them that he had at Kenny’s house. I brought my own arms to loop around his neck, running my fingers through his hair as he controlled our kiss. This was the fifth kiss now so I was becoming more accustomed to the way my mouth slotted perfectly against his own; like this was always meant to happen. He sighed contently into my mouth before disconnecting our mouths, causing me to almost groan in frustration. I missed the contact of his warm, wet lips almost immediately right until they trailed down and kissed my favourite spot under my ear. As I felt him gently peck at the skin before gently sucking on it, I let out a slight moan that I bit my lip to control. I felt his laugh against my skin before gently nipping at the sensitive area with his teeth, sending shivers right down my spine. It was like we had held ourselves back for so long, we couldn’t stay in the same place for too long. He gently trailed hot opened mouth kissed back up to my lips as we increased in speed again. I hadn’t realised that our grip on each other had been getting tighter, his nails almost digging into the soft skin on my thigh and my own fingers locked in his hair as if he was going to disappear at any moment. I could feel myself getting more and more turned on and there was no way of hiding it in my baggy pyjama bottoms. When I had worn jeans in the past, it was always easier to fold them in a certain way that could make it look as if it was simply how the material fell but there was no such chance given by soft cotton. He had his body slightly angled off mine so I had been managing to cover my need for him by pulling my knee up but as it was getting worse, I was running out of positions to hide it. He began trailing his hand up my thigh, applying the right amount of pressure to make me completely hard. I had flashbacks to before when he had gotten freaked out at Kenny’s when he seemed to fully comprehend that I was a boy. With that, the fear took over and I pushed him away, making his body completely disconnect with mine.

“Erm,” I almost squeaked, my cheeks flushed with both pleasure and embarrassment “I’m so hungry.”  
“Is everything okay?” He frowned as I shot to my knees and turned my body away so he could not see the tell-tale signs of how turned on I had been. To hear the hurt in his voice broke me, I didn’t want him to think that I didn’t want to kiss him. It couldn’t have been further than the truth because when I had disconnected our lips, it had felt as if I was pulling the plug on my life support machine.  
“Yes!” I said quickly.  
“Then look at me!” He came behind me where I was sat on the edge of my bed. I reached up behind me and pulled his head to fit perfectly in the crook of my neck and turned my head awkwardly to kiss him.  
“I promise you, I am okay.” I almost whispered against his lips. It was a lie, I really wasn’t okay but not in the way that he assumed. “I’m just really hungry.”  
“You are your fucking food, Franks!” He sighed kissing my cheek messily causing the butterflies in my stomach to frantically flap their wings as I breathed the scent of him in. I was so fucking in love with him, I think I was in actual Heaven.

——-

**\- How is he?**

James text me. I hadn’t been purposely avoiding my phone, it was just that when I was with Gerard I didn’t want to waste any moment by being on it. He had kept his own turned off and far away from his reach claiming he needed to get his head straight before he even attempted to explain to Joe about why he had disappeared so much earlier to usual last night.

“Who you texting?” Gerard asked me, throwing his arm around my shoulder making my heart hammer against my chest. He could do the most basic of things to me and make me feel like every Taylor Swift song ever written; it was almost embarrassing.  
“No one,” I said quickly, leaning into his touch. I hadn’t been lying earlier, I was fucking starving. I had been so occupied with living my fantasies I had forgotten about eating anything even though the sky was now turning black as the night fell. Gerard had insisted on buying me a Chinese to shut my rumbling stomach up despite the fact he told me he still didn’t feel completely well. As we had set off to get the food, he had slowly begun to walk closer to me until the distance between us was non existent. I wasn’t exactly expecting Joe and all of his horrible friends to be lurking down the back alleys that lead from my house to the Chinese, but I still didn’t think Gerard would have been this careless. Him acting this affectionate to me was not really abnormal, it just felt it because of the different context between us now. I begged to speak to him about what the fuck was happening between us but I didn’t want to quite apply that pressure yet. I needed to embrace him without questions before I pushed my luck.  
“Oh my Gosh! How cool!” He said excitably running over to an overturned shopping trolley with its wheels still spinning from the delinquents who had left it there. He hauled it so that it was upright, smiling maniacally as if he had just found pure gold. “Get in!”  
“No!” I argued, crossing my arms for emphasis.  
“Why not?”  
“Because it’s illegal, Gerard,” I said in horror as he came over to me with the stolen cart. My panicked response only caused a laugh out of him; much to my annoyance.  
“Let me give you a ride,” he raised an eyebrow at me, causing me to blush. I hated how I could be so comfortable around someone that also possessed the ability to make me squirm.  
“Fine.” I replied bluntly, “but only for a minute.”

“Gerard, Gerard, _Gerard_!” I screamed as he sped up even faster down the alleyway, narrowly missing a street light. I hated to admit it, but it was kind of fun. There had been a moment that I had tossed my head back in the cart and looked up at him pushing me around quickly where I’d just felt complete. The noise of his laughter mixed with the adrenaline of being pushed around like we were still young enough to be like the delinquent youths that had left the trolley there in the first place was the perfect recipe for my happiness. Instead of responding to my concern, he instead started spinning the cart. Although I should have protested, I let the dizzy haze fall over my head as I almost felt drunk. Drunk for him.  
“Gerard!” I yelled again as the noise of sirens filled the air. I didn’t know why I panicked so much, we were sitting in a stolen cart not exactly harvesting heroin but I had always been the sensible one. Me and my friends didn’t really do illegal stuff because it just wasn’t us, Gerard’s group, on the other hand, they lived for the thrill. “Stop!”  
“Why?”  
“The police are going to come!”  
“Frank,” he laughed, breathing heavily with exhaustion after pushing me so quickly, “you’re too scared of the police.”  
I stood shakily to my feet, as he offered his hand to help me out of the trolley which I only had to accept because I did not want to fall. He was right, I had always been fearful of authority because of my mother’s job and my fathers stern words of it affecting my soccer future. Although Bethany had the same job, Gerard had almost stopped caring about the law when he stopped caring about himself. Don’t get me wrong, he wasn’t out there hijacking banks or killing people, but he had just stopped worrying about the consequences of his stupid actions. He never wanted his mother to find out about his illegal hobbies, but it was never enough fear to stop him from doing them.  
“Erh, yeah, because I don’t want to be arrested!” I said dumbly at him. How was he being this dry?  
“It’s a trolley,” he smirked. “Plus, being arrested isn’t even that bad.”  
“What?” I said coldly towards him.  
“Last summer,” he said nonchalantly “got caught with weed.”  
“Gerard!” I snapped in horror. How could he have been so stupid? His mother could have gotten in serious trouble if the authorities knew that there were drugs in her house, but he was too selfish to care.  
“What? Nothing happened they just rang who they thought was my dad.” He shrugged as if he was merely telling me the weather and not that he had gotten fucking arrested.  
“Who was it?”  
“Dean’s dad. He picked me up because he doesn’t give a shit about stuff like that.”  
“Yeah, and that’s why Dean’s a fucking waster!”  
“Frank, he’s nice! Oh for fuck's sake, this is why I didn’t tell you when it happened.”  
I was suddenly furious with him, I couldn’t believe he’d been so stupid. I shouldn’t have taken it so personally but I found my self walking away from him at an increased pace.  
“Frank!” He yelled, “don’t be a prick!”  
I didn’t turn around though until I felt his hand grab my arm harshly and forcibly turn me to face him. Although I was fuming, I was still pathetically infatuated with those intrusive green eyes that blinked back at me. I half-heartedly attempted to pull my arm out of his grip but made no attempts to stop him kissing me deeply, slowly pushing me back against the rough brick wall of the alley. He delicately lifted my chin up with his fingers as I let my arms swing helplessly by my side, completely crumbling under his affections. We were outside and he was kissing me like it was private. It was weird to feel the contrasting cool breeze whipping around our cheeks to the warm, wet haven in his mouth because I wasn’t used to his public affections to this extent. It was dangerous and I liked it.  
“Frank,” he mumbled against my lips before pulling back and looking deeply in my eyes. “You need to let go, you can’t be this perfect person who can fixes everything all the time.”  
“But, people need me,” I confessed. I didn’t need to directly express my uptightness to him because he already knew about it. My anger that I had previously taken out on him was probably more of a reflection of my own strive for perfectionism that he just seemed to understand.  
“Yeah, but you have to be selfish sometimes,” he nuzzled his nose against my own, causing me to desperately grip at his sides to keep him there.  
“I can’t,” I said pathetically.  
“What do you want, Frank?” He rested his forehead against my own, looking into my eyes. I was getting weaker and weaker under his scrutinising glare, almost as if he was dragging the truth out of me. “Just tell me what you want.”  
“You.” I scrunched my eyes shut tightly with the harshness of my confession I had been trying to deny him for so long. “I want you, Gerard.”  
“Then have me.”  
With that, he kissed me again, deeper this time pushing his tongue past my lips and against my own. His hand snaked around and tangled in my hair, pulling gently, causing my mouth to welcome him in further. We kissed like that for barely a minute before I felt him press his crotch against me, almost as if he could sense my concerns. I was shocked that it wasn’t as one-sided as I had earlier believed as I felt how turned on he was himself against my leg. He did have the safety barrier of jeans on, but he wasn't hiding behind it. He wanted me to know how much he wanted me in that moment and fuck, I wanted him too. I let all my inhibitions go as I separated the kiss long enough to drag his arm back in the direction of my house; our food hunger long overshadowed for our hunger for each other. I stumbled backwards with him, never quite being able to separate ourselves long enough to walk home properly. If I could, I would have let him do whatever he fucking wanted to me in the middle of my street but I knew we had to wait.

I couldn’t believe something so trivial as an abandoned shopping cart had finally given me something I had been craving for years; the ability to get what I wanted instead of waiting for it to come to me. I was free from the constraints of expectations, and it felt fucking amazing.


	29. I need to believe in love

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> SO
> 
> I have never actually written any kind of scene like this (you'll see what I mean when you read it I don't wanna give spoilers) because I'm an awkward person lol so I'm so sorry if you were expecting some kind of dove keeper beautiful literature bcos I am BAD AT THIS
> 
> I hope it's not bad enough that you all lost faith in me hahaha I'm sorry I tried

We tumbled backwards hitting my front door harshly causing a clatter behind us. 

“We-have-to” I attempted, but quickly gave up as I got lost in his lips again. I knew that even though it was dark, any of my neighbours could have seen, but I didn’t care. His hands were grabbing desperately all over my body and all I could do was almost melt into him, aching for him to be even closer to me. It wasn’t that I was fearless, because I was fucking petrified it was just that my lust for him was even stronger. 

“Wait,” I forced out, detaching us enough to unlock the door. My hands were shaking so much that I dropped my key as it fell at our feet. He seemed to understand my pleas and bent down to pick it up, unlocking the door coyly. I didn’t understand how he wasn’t freaking out, we were best friends and this had come almost out of nowhere. I knew that he was experienced, but I wasn’t exactly his usual type. If I did not know him so well, however, I could never have guessed that though because as he slipped his hand into mine pulling me through the door to my own house, he just oozed confidence. 

“ _Shh_ ,” he held his finger to his lip as we snook past the doorway to my living room where my parents were sat. The blue light from the tv screen illuminated the hallway, and the blaring volume disguised our hurried movements which I was thankful for. I didn’t quite have an explanation as to why we didn’t have any food with us, or why we had returned so quickly. 

 

As soon as we had crept up the first set of stairs, he pushed me against the wall and kissed me hard, bringing his fingers to tangle in my hair again. I understood while all those girls fell for his games over and over because he’d appeared to perfect the amount of pressure he applied in his kiss to give you a little of what you wanted, but leave you needing more. I was shocked I was even able to make it up the stairs without crumbling at his feet, because he was making me feel as if he was sucking every ounce of life out of me, and I wasn’t objecting. We pushed the door open in a rush to get behind the safety of my room as we tumbled back, crashing into my desk as we went. With the force that I fell against it, all my belongs clattered to the floor but all I could focus on was the way his warm lips pressed forcefully against my neck. He didn’t seem content with the pace we were moving so lifted me slightly to push me back on to my bed. For a moment he just knelt over me as he half followed me down into the mattress, mouth open and pupils blown. He looked fucking devilish but fuck me, he was beautiful. I thought for a moment he was going to speak, instead, he just panted, hot breaths coming out quickly from his red, puffy lips. It was like he had almost frozen, neither of us really having a clue how to get over that final hurdle of friendship to something more. I closed my eyes for a brief second before deciding to do what he’d been begging me to do only 15 minutes earlier. I was going to show him what I wanted, and what I wanted was his body. I pulled at the hem of my own shirt, toying with the soft cotton slightly before taking the plunge and taking it off. He seemed shocked at my forwardness, but it was not necessarily in a bad way. 

“Fuck me,” he whimpered quietly. His voice seemed rougher than usual, but not completely unfamiliar. 

“Wh-What?” I stuttered out, blinking up at him desperately. 

“You’re fucking beautiful,” he flickered his gaze all over my bare chest as if he had never seen it before. I guess in a way he hadn’t, I mean, he hadn’t exactly seen me in this way before. His words warmed me more than any fire ever could. I knew in my heart not to get ahead of myself, he was probably caught up in the moment but I was falling for him harder than I had before. I was falling so fucking quickly, I knew that I could be seconds away from hitting the ground, my whole body splattering all over the pavement beneath me. I was so in love with him, I could not find a way to annunciate my words enough to respond to him, I just let him kiss me again. This time he quickly moved to kiss my neck again but did not stay there with the new skin I had on show for him. He moved down further so that his mouth covered my collar bone, sucking at it hard, causing me to wrap my fingers in his hair to keep him there. I felt his tongue push against my skin, eliciting a small whimper from my lips out of pure pleasure. I felt him laugh against me as I dug my toes in harshly in to my duvet. 

“So hot,” he mumbled against me, “that no ones ever touched you.” 

It was kind of weird to hear my best friend speak to me in the way I had heard him speak to the many others that had come before me. I was so turned on though, I didn’t care, and all he had done was kiss me. He momentarily detached his lips from my bare chest long enough to rip off his own hoodie, giving me a few brief, precious seconds to admire him. Due to his past, he often covered up even in front of me despite becoming toned with his weight obsession. I obviously wouldn’t have cared whatever state he was in, but there was just something about feeling his taut chest muscles under my fingers that I had not realised had reached out to touch him, that sent me into a dizzy haze. His chest was pale, my own olive toned skin contrasting with it, making me even more aware of how I was touching him. I trailed my fingers back up to interlock in his hair to drag him down to my lips again. I couldn’t fucking wait any longer. 

He seemed to not be content with this though and instead flipped us over so I was on top of him. It was closer than we had ever been in our whole lives, my body so dangerously entangled in his I feared I would never separate us. He seemed to sense that I was in the dark with everything and guided my body to exactly how he wanted it. He ran his soft fingertips down my bare back, causing me to shudder as he let his hands go further than they ever had before. Don’t get me wrong, there had been a few times when he had hugged me that his hands had gotten dangerously low, but it had never amounted to much. Not now though, now he didn’t fucking care. He grabbed my ass with enough force to let me know that it was definitely intentional, pulling me up slightly so I was more so straddling him. Even though he now had me in the position he wanted, he did not move his hands. Instead, he massaged the skin, closing the distance between our bodies even further. Our crotches rocked together as he gently started to encourage me to move against him, making me gasp as I felt that he was fully hard. Despite my love for him, feeling your best friends dick was a bit fucking surreal. I had gotten so used to our immature sleepovers and our boyish play fights that feeling his crotch grind against my own made me lose my mind even further. I wasn’t sure if it was out of surprise or pleasure, perhaps even both, but he took the opportunity to latch his mouth back onto my own. At this point, I was finding it hard to kiss him, my own virginity working fiercely against me. It wasn’t as if he was uninterested, but his experience made him more composed than I was. I just couldn’t contain myself though, I could feel his heart hammering hard against his warm chest making my stomach flip wildly. I felt his tongue run lazily against my own, enjoying the way he was making me moan like the bitch I was. I didn’t care that my parents were in the house, and the only one who could possibly be eliciting those moans was my childhood best friend; I just needed more of him. 

“What do you want?” He almost whispered in a husky voice right in my ear. The way he suddenly sounded like he’d smoked 50 a day for the past twenty years was enough to send me in to some sort of frenzy. I didn’t fucking know what I wanted; just that it had to come from him. 

“I- I don’t know,” I trailed off my sentence, groaning as he grabbed me particularly hard and thrust himself into me from the bed. 

“I mean, I’m sure I don’t have to tell you this, but I don’t exactly know what I’m doing,” he chuckled, which I could not replicate due to my fucking nervousness. 

“Me neither,” I almost gulped. My own advantage in this though was that Gerard was only experienced with girls, meaning we were both as fucking clueless on how to act on each other. 

“Well,” he said gently pushing my body off of his and switching our positions so he was back on top of me “let’s fucking find out, bug.” With that, he grinned wildly making me grow weaker with anticipation. All I could do was lie there and let him do whatever he fucking wanted to me. He angled his body so that it was half off my own and engulfed the delicate skin on my neck again, except this time he grabbed my thigh. He had done this action before but usually stopped halfway up. This time though was different, he trailed his hand up slowly, every inch feeling like a fucking yard. He finally got to my dick that was by that point throbbing for him to touch. It was almost as if he could read my thoughts because he smiled against my bare skin as he cupped me through my jeans. I suddenly hated the stubborn denim, wishing it was thinner so I could feel him more. I tried not to act the inexperienced fool, but I was going through some sort of sensory overload with the way he was gently massaging his hand against my dick and the way he was nipping delicately at the already bruised skin. I knew he was leaving some sort of mark, but as I’d said before, I didn’t fucking care at that moment. I wanted him to mark me like he was fucking branding me, I wanted people to know I was all his. He pulled his hand up further, toying with the metal button on my too tight jeans before opening it and slowly unzipping them. 

“Are you sure?” He pulled back slightly, searching in my eyes for consent whilst dipping his warm fingertips against my boxer waistband. 

“Mffpgh,” was all I could reply, greedily grabbing his head to kiss my neck again. He just shrugged before trailing his hand down into my underwear, grabbing me with his hand. 

 

Fuck me. 

 

I had spent long nights trying to force my hand away from doing the same action he was doing whilst thinking of him, and I wished I hadn’t have bothered. I’d restrained myself from sexualising him for so long that now I finally could, I couldn’t fucking hold back. I bucked my hips eagerly as he began to stroke me slowly, eliciting all sorts of half-arsed cursed words from my open mouth with utter pleasure. He swallowed my gasps with his open, wet mouth covering my own increasing the speed of his hand. I suddenly did not blame him for being addicted to the feeling of this, I could see myself falling into the same trap. I couldn’t believe that he had not done this to somebody else before because he twisted his hand around me, paying extra attention to the tip, making me dig my toes into the bed in pleasure. I tried to stifle the noises I was making by biting his lip but I couldn’t quite manage it. 

“Baby,” he moaned, gently nibbling my ear, nearly making me finish embarrassingly quick. 

“Stop!” I said a little quickly, gasping and screwing my eyes shut with trying to not go over the edge that fucking quickly. It was just the way he called me baby, it sent shivers down my spine. I had never called him call anybody baby, just the less endearing, repetitive and annoying ‘babe’. 

“What’s up?” He said immediately, pulling his hand from out of my jeans. I hadn’t even managed to get them off without nearly fucking cuming in his hand after about 30 seconds. 

“I erh- can I?” I asked awkwardly. 

“You don’t have to do it back, I don’t wanna rush you,” he looked deeply into my eyes again. Little did he know that I had been thinking of this moment since I’d hit puberty, there was no rush about this. 

“I do want to, I’m just scared,” I confessed barely above a whisper. 

“Of what?”

“You... you have all these girls who have done this a hundred times before and then there’s me, I don’t even know what I’m fucking doing.”

“There’s a difference, Franks” he smirked. 

“What?” I hauled myself to my elbows trying to ignore the way my dick was aching for more of his touch. 

“I don’t like those girls. I know it’s horrible, it’s fucking shit of me, but I just like the way they make me forget for a bit, but you...” he placed a soft kiss on the very tip of my nose. “I like you, bug.”

Liking someone could mean anything, I knew that, but still, my heart fluttered with anticipation. He could have just been bored, I could have just been there to momentarily take the pain away, but I didn’t exactly mind. 

“Show me,” I leant forward, kissing his lips softly to show him that I wanted this. With that, he lay by my side and grabbed my hand, trailing it down his bare chest. He readily kicked off his jeans, discarding them carelessly with a kick of his leg and confidently repeated the action with his boxers. 

He was naked. In my bed. He was fucking naked, kissing me, just as turned on as I was. His hand was still pulling my own, before gently leaving it just on his pelvic bone. 

“Just do what you feel comfortable with,” he whispered and pecked my lips reassuringly. It wasn’t exactly how I expected my first sexual experience to go, but it’s what I needed. I didn’t need him to rush or force me through anything, I needed him to keep me afloat until I was confident enough to paddle by myself. I was suddenly incredibly grateful for him, and how understanding he truly was with me. I wasn’t backing down though. Fuck fear, it had already taken so much from me, it wasn’t taking this. 

I reached down and wrapped my hand around his dick which I was surprised with how turned on he actually was. He was already leaking as if I’d done anything but awkwardly grab him. I didn’t know what to say, so I just kissed him and he kissed me back. It was deep, but it was needed. Our tongues tangled as I began to move my hand up and down him like I had done to myself many times before. I was thankful that I had the same anatomy as him, it meant I wasn’t as in the dark as I thought. 

“Fuck me, Frank,” he groaned against my mouth, the vibrations of his words causing me to speed up my actions. I copied the things I liked on myself on him, twisting my hand just as I got to the tip which he seemed to like with the way he bucked his hips closer to me. In what seemed like desperation, he reached down and touched me again in the same way I was touching him as we began to move almost in unison. In the process, my jeans and boxers got pushed down to my ankles, with no time to take them off completely.

We kissed deeply, barely managing it as we were both open mouthed and panting. His mouth was warm and wet, and it sent me into overdrive. He blurred his fist a couple more times, gently cupping my balls as he went causing that all too familiar oblivion in the pit of my stomach. Hearing him moan my name in his best attempts to be quiet sent me over the edge as I finished, a warm mess spilling over onto his hand. In passion, I bit his cheek hard trying to stifle the way his name was threatening to spill off my tongue. He didn’t pull back straight away, he just continued to stroke me through my orgasm. 

“Sorry,” I blushed, finally managing to open my eyes again and release his cheek. 

“Don’t be- ah fuck,” he didn’t quite manage to say before I resumed my grip on him. Now that I was basking in a post-orgasm radiating throughout my body, I was able to focus on him, and his body. I began stroking him again, applying varied pressure in the same way he’d done to me. I turned and angled my body so I was half leaning over him so I could kiss his neck. I was yet to do that, but I didn’t think I was doing it incorrectly with the way he was yanking at my hair to keep me in the crook of his neck. I gave gentle butterfly kisses before nipping at the warm, flushed skin under me. 

“Baby,” he said again, his voice in that same husky tone that I craved. It only spurred me on more as I sped up the action of my hand on him. In what seemed like pleasure, he brought one of his knees up, tightening his grip on my hair. With one last twist of the head of his dick, I felt a warm liquid spill over on my hand as he spat out curse words in a similar way to I had only moments earlier. I didn’t stop until I felt his hand fully relax and release me from his skin, giggling slightly as he realised how tight his grip had been on me. 

 

“So, I do usually last longer I-“ he said awkwardly, a blush spreading further across his already flushed cheeks. 

“Shut up,” I smirked. If only he knew how close I had been to finishing after only a few touches from him, he wouldn’t have been so embarrassed. In fact, I was actually impressed with myself. Me, the fucking virgin had made him cum so quickly it had shocked even him. 

“No, it was the way you moaned. How the fuck have I never known you could make those noises, bug?” He threw his head back, covering his face in what seemed like surprise. 

“Oh,” I blushed remembering the way I had to stop myself from crying out for him. 

“Tell me why we haven’t done that before, man. All those times I was horny as fuck on those Friday nights and you had that in you all along,” he laughed. 

“You- Erm... those Fridays- you?” I stuttered out trying to ignore the way the mention of those sexually tense Friday nights made my dick jump with further anticipation, despite only finishing a few moments before. 

“Erh, Durh, could you not tell?” He chuckled further. 

“No,” I said completely baffled. 

“Why do you think I kissed you doughnut?”

“Because you felt sorry for me... I don’t know, Gerard!”

“Do you think I did that because I felt sorry for you?” He raised an eyebrow, gripping my thigh to show me what he meant. 

“I don’t know,” I replied suddenly feeling scrutinised with the way his beautiful, emerald eyes read over me. 

“No, like I said, you’re the only one I’ve fucking cared about.”

“I- I,” I became lost in him. I loved him so much, he stole every breath from my hammering heart. He may not have meant it like I wanted him to, but fuck it felt good. I couldn’t believe I had gotten so lucky as he placed a wet kiss on my forehead. 

“You don’t have to speak. You do, however, have to let me make you moan like that again, fuck me,” he laughed rolling onto his stomach and looking up at me. “I mean if you want obviously.”

“Maybe, I wouldn’t object to that,” I kissed his shoulder and nuzzled into him. 

 

******

“Time to face the fucking music,” he sighed after some time. We had been silent for a while but had remained with no clothes on. He had pulled me onto his bare chest as he had joined our hands and had begun examining them as if they held the secrets to the universe. 

“Huh?” I glanced upwards at him. His brow was furrowed with concern, and I hated to see the way his forehead had become wrinkled with stress. Instead of answering, he reached up to my bedside cabinet where he had previously left his phone abandoned. He grabbed it nervously between his fingers as if it was an explosive device that could go off any moment. In a way, that’s what it was. It had the ability to kill the new life that had spawned between us just by pressing the on button which he was hovering his finger over. 

“Why would you do that?” I snapped a little too quickly, the fear of what would happen once he turned it on taking hold. I had become so lost in the version of him I was in love with, I couldn’t bear to see the monster Joe had created return. 

“I can’t just disappear, Frank. My moms gonna flip!”

“Well, call her off my phone!” I said and instantly regretted it. I did not want him to think of me as possessive, even though that’s exactly what I was. 

“Frank, I just need to,” he said sternly but carefully. I ignored him, but let him bring his phone to life that he’d had off since he’d put it on charge the night before. I closed my eyes, burying myself into his chest as I heard notification after fucking notification. 

“Fuck,” he grumbled under his breath as he quickly retracted his arm to reply to the abundance of messages, leaving me disregarded next to him. 

“What’s up?” I dared to ask him, but he didn’t respond, just furrowed his brow further. 

 

“Franks,” he said, sighing heavily. 

“What?” I replied bluntly, knowing full well what was coming. 

“I’ve got to go,” he sighed again as if he was being dragged away from me against his will. 

“Why?” I asked too quickly, my own hurt coming out. 

“Joe’s asking where I am. He’s threatening to come round to my house and if I’m not there, he’s gonna get suspicious.”

“But- But-“

“Frank, man! Don’t do this to me, you know I’ve gotta go, he’s got all my shit that I left at his last night.”

“You haven’t even eaten!” I tried in utter desperation, fully knowing it was futile. If I wasn’t enough to make him stay, food definitely wasn’t. 

“I’m not hungry anyway!” He said quickly, sitting up at gathering his discarded clothes. “You better still eat though, bug.”

“But-“

“Look,” he said turning to face me as he pulled his shirt on. “I’ll only be like an hour tops, I just need to sort this shit out and I’ll be back, yeah?”

“Okay,” I sighed, unhappily. 

“Hey!” He knelt next to me, dragging my chin up to look at him. I gathered the duvet around me self consciously, suddenly becoming increasingly aware of the fact he was now fully dressed. “Don’t give me those fucking moon eyes, bug!” 

He contradicted himself because if my gaze was his weakness, then why was he not letting me drag it away from him? He leant forward placing kisses all over my face, resulting in me smiling just a little. 

“An hour, I promise!” He kissed me on my lips one last time before jumping to his feet. 

“Okay, an hour.” I agreed, despite it hurting. I was so confused because, on one hand, I was so happy after the most perfect day, but on the other, my heart felt heavy as I knew he was leaving me for what I hated the most. 

“Bye, baby,” he stood at the door, looking up at me from under his hair making me grateful for the fact that I was laying down, because I felt like fucking swooning. 

“Bye, G,” I sighed as I heard him sneak down the stairs. 

 

****

 

I’d finally eaten something, enjoying it a little too much because of how hungry I fucking was. I was grateful that I hauled my heavy dressing gown around me to hide the marks he’d left all over my chest and neck, because my mother came into the kitchen not long after I’d started to devour the toast that I had made. 

“Oh, I didn’t know you were back!” She said after I had made her jump. 

“Yeah, been back like 15 minutes,” I lied. 

“Oh, where’s Gerard?”

“He had to get something from Joe.”

“Oh,” she frowned a little. “You look happy,” she shook off her unhappiness and came and chucked my cheek instead, wiping stray crumbs as she did so. 

“I am,” I agreed, still basking in the pleasure of loving him. 

“How come?” She quizzed, not used to me being so flushed pink with joy. 

“Just had a good day,” I shrugged. 

“I’m glad,” she grinned. “Sometimes I worry about that boy and those friends of his.”

“Me too,” I rolled my eyes. 

 

****

 

As I slipped into bed after I was finally satisfied after not eating for 24 hours, all I could do was grin to myself. My sheets were still ruffled and coated in his scent, sending my stomach into a frenzy every time I noticed. I turned around and grinned into my pillow, finally giving into being the thirteen-year-old girl that I felt like, until my phone buzzed. 

 

**\- I can’t get away from him :(. Miss you, baby xo**

 

I couldn’t lie and say that I wasn’t disappointed but I knew it was going to be that way. I knew when he said an hour, he probably meant a day but the way he called me baby made it all okay. 

 

**\- be safe, miss you too.**

 

I text him back, just praying that he listened to me. 

 

As I lay in bed that night, I tried to let sleep consume me. I’d slept too much in the day for it to be an easy task, plus my hormones were driving me clinically insane thinking about his hands that had been all over me. It had been the way he hadn’t been able to hold back my name from tumbling off his lips, and the way he had pulled my hair so hard he’d left me with a slight throb in my head. I didn’t know how it was possible, but I had fallen even fucking harder for him, and this time I didn’t think I would ever be able to stand up again. 

 

 

 

 

 

 


	30. I never said that we would die together

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Do Americans have Lewis Capaldi? I don't know but his music is what is making this so emo for me to write lol but this is the song for the chapter :)   
> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pn802pDdJOs
> 
> Like I said before, I tried to keep Gerard's POV to a minimum to keep it a mystery but I think you need to know what he's been up to

**G POV-**

I knocked harshly at the door, trying to get the way he had been whimpering my name from out of my head. It was so loud, it was echoing around and no amount of my own shouting would cancel it out. There were only two things on this fucking Earth that possessed the power to rid me of these feelings for him, and they had never let me down before. I hadn’t even gone home first, I just needed to get those fucking whiskey coloured eyes, begging for more, out of my head.

“Gerard,” Amber answered, looking as if I had just grown two heads or something. Her face suddenly clouded with thunder, and I wasn’t exactly surprised. I had been selfishly wrapped up in my own fantasies and ignored her since last night. That’s all they were though, stupid fucking fantasies that I had let escape my head after years of repressing them, and now I didn’t know how to cope. 

“Babe, I’m sorry-“ I began, but it appeared Amber wasn’t quite like the girls before. She wasn’t as easily going to fall at my feet, and I was half tempted to just go and call one of the easier ones. 

“You were with some girl! I fucking know you were!” She yelled at me as if she had straight facts. I had been with somebody else, but it probably wasn’t who she had been expecting. I was beginning to shake because I needed my releases so fucking badly, I was willing to say anything to make her give them to me.

“Nah, babe, I was with Frank!” I protested.

“That’s no better! You know what he did to Hannah!”

“I was fucked, babe! Do you really think last night I could have fucked anybody? I could barely walk!”

I saw memories from the night before flicker in her mind. The last time she had seen me, I could sense myself panicking. I didn’t want her to know that about me, so I had quickly pulled myself away from her, and the rest had been a complete blur. My body was still twisting violently with the memories and neglect it had been through, but fuck it, my self-destruction was more important. 

“But you didn’t call all day,” she began, her words softening.

“I lost my phone at Delo’s, babe!” I reached forward and stroked a stray hair from her eyes, something that I knew made her weak. “I’m really sorry.”

“I-“ she started to say, but I shut her up by kissing her and pushing her back towards her room. I tried to ignore the way my stomach did not flip, and my heart did not hammer like they did a couple of hours before. 

 

***

 

I tried to tell myself that I had lasted way too long because it hadn’t been that long since I had cum before, but the thought left me hot and uncomfortable. It was made even worse by the fact I knew I had only finished with her because I was thinking of the way he had been whimpering under me when I had touched his virgin skin. I felt a strange feeling spread under my skin, almost as if my blood had been replaced with liquid nitrogen, mixed with lava and I needed to get rid of it.

“Babe, have you got anything?” I asked, almost pushing her away from me as her naked body was making the prickling inside my chest worse. 

“Is that why you came round?” She frowned, “I knew you didn’t find me attractive anymore! That’s why you lasted like 30 fucking minutes!” I could tell she was working herself into a frenzy and I couldn’t deal with it. My own mind was tormenting me enough, I didn’t need her making it worse. She didn’t know fucking jack shit about mental torture. 

“No!” I said quickly, “look believe what you fucking wanna, but I do love you, Amber.”

It was weird, she was the girl I should have cared about the most. She was fucking amazingly beautiful, she hadn’t fucked any of my friends and she seemed to want me, despite how fucked up I was. However, no matter how many times you said you loved somebody, it didn’t make it true. Her kisses left me cold and her touch left me unexcited, which was now worse as I had something real to compare it to. He’d barely touched me earlier, but I hadn’t been able to hold back. I tried to tell myself it was because it was dangerous and that’s what I craved. It was new and exciting to me, but fuck, it left me uneasy. 

“You love me?” She quizzed.

“Yes!” I lied.

“I love you too!” She grinned, trying to kiss me. I half-arsed pecked her lips, needing something a lot stronger to take the thoughts of somebody else from my mind.

“Here,” she tossed me a little bag of white powder from her bedside cabinet, which I could only greedily accept. I didn’t even have time to put anything but my underwear back on before I was pouring more than I should on the counter and snorting myself into that oblivion that I craved so much. 

 


	31. She's in your jeans, but I don't care

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gGPeX-vQrlw

**F POV-**

Although Gerard had not come back to my house, he had still text me throughout the night and the morning so I could not be too bitter. As I showered, all I could do was run my finger over every bruised he had caused by sucking on my skin, smiling as I did so. I was just so content, I felt as I could take on the world.

I had rushed to the park when my group chat had suggested a friendly kick about because I needed to do anything but think of Gerard. He had possessed my thoughts so much that I needed a break. I was becoming selfishly engorged in him and his love, but that didn’t mean he should have been the only thing I cared about. Although he was messaging me, he clearly wasn’t waiting around for me to visit him, so I had to do the same.

“No!” Matt said, slapping Harry’s arm like a giddy teenager as I approached my friends sat around the football goal. “Look at him!”  
“What?” I frowned, all their eyes burning into me. All but James, who was picking apart a blade of grass as if he was giving it an autopsy.  
“How does it feel to not be a virgin anymore?” Harry raised his eyebrow, chewing on gum nonchalantly.  
“What?” I frowned.  
“He’s a biter, ain’t he?” Nathan said jumping to his feet and forcing me to expose my bruised neck. “What did your mom say?”  
“Hey!” I said in irritation, but could not fight the smile spreading across my cheek as Nathan slapped my arm in excitement.   
“Spill it, shorty,” Matt said, patting a space in the grass next to him. I sat down next to him, gushing about the way my best friend had touched me.  
“He was really bad on Friday, but yesterday he was fine,” I confirmed as all of them but James gathered around, clinging on to my every word. I think it was just as strange for them that the biggest womaniser that we all knew was apparently not as straight as we had all once believed. I didn’t know what James’ problem was, I did feel guilty that I had neglected him a little but he needed to know what his meant to me. Gerard was all that I thought about, he was the only thing that I fucking wanted and he knew that.   
“Anyway, he kissed me out of nowhere and yeah… it just kind of lead to other stuff.” I blushed, not knowing how to verbalise what we had done without feeling awkward. I wished I could be like Matt. When he had lost his virginity, he had told us all in (too much) detail of exactly how it happened, right down to how many minutes he had lasted precisely.   
“Right, I don’t want to know in detail but like, what did you do?” Harry asked with wide eyes.  
“Erm, he-“  
“Fucked you?” Matt asked.  
“No, he-“  
“You fucked him?”  
“No-“  
“He sucked you off?”  
“No! He jacked me off,” I said in frustration at Matt’s interruptions and then blushed with the harshness of my words.  
“Oh for fuck's sake, that doesn’t count!” Matt sighed, “does it? I don’t really know.”  
“Was it good?” Kenny asked, almost a little too eagerly. I didn’t respond, just flashed him a smirk that said it all.  
“Oi, oi,” Nathan laughed as himself and Matt tackled me to the floor.

***

We didn’t play much soccer. Instead, they wanted to know if the one who had a reputation as being some kind of sex master lived up to his name, and fuck me, he did. It felt kind of good to finally be able to join in Matt, Harry and Nathan’s sex conversations with some pragmatical knowledge to back me up with and to be able to answer Kenny’s intrusive questions.

Matt was in the middle of a particularly vulgar tale of bending a girl he had met on tinder over his mother’s kitchen table, when he was interrupted by a wolf whistle from Harry. I shot my gaze up to realise what had elicited such a noise from my friend to see the love of my life strolling towards my group, as if it was a completely natural action.   
“Shut up, Harry,” I blushed, not being able to drag my eyes from him. The sky was just at that time where it was golden, only becoming more eccentric with the yellow of the autumn trees, and it suited him. Although the sun was not hot, it was strong enough to make him glow like some fucking Adonis as he approached us. He was only wearing his grey tracksuit bottoms, white hoodie and black hat, but now I knew what was underneath those clothes, I was finding it hard to cope.   
“Hi,” he said a little awkwardly, the unfamiliarity of approaching my friends taking over. I tried to ignore the way his eyes had grown red again and attempted not to think of the many substances that had left them that way. It didn’t take much though, because he came and dropped his body next to mine, lying down but propping himself up on his elbows.  
“Why are you here?” I almost squeaked, not being able to calm my heart from the way it was beating angrily for him.  
“Ah, _charming_ ,” he giggled, nuzzling against my shoulder slightly.  
“No I just meant, you and the soccer pitch aren’t exactly besties.”  
“I went to see you, your mom said you were here, so here I am!”  
“So romantic,” Matt sniggered under his breath, causing Gerard to snap his gaze up.   
“Erm, Frank?” He frowned at me, looking almost irritated that Matt had commented on it.  
“Nah,” Matt was quick to add. “This was your clumsy mistake because if you’re going to fuck an absolute virgin who is in love with you, don’t leave hickies all over the guy!”  
“ _Matt_!” I blushed furiously. I was glad Matt had always been such a cunt, it meant that him exposing my love for Gerard could have just of been hyperbole as much as it could have been the truth. I expected Gerard to still be angry though. Him kissing a boy did not seem like something he wanted anybody to ever know, especially my loud-mouthed friends. He did not seem to see Matt in the same harmless light that I did most of the time, only nibbling at his bait that he always lay out for him. I was shocked however though, to see Gerard glance upwards at James, who was still glaring at the floor, and then nonchalantly shrug.   
“You’ve got some mud on your face, bug,” he tutted and scrubbed at my cheek with his thumb. I couldn’t help but lean into his touch slightly, grinning upwards at him. After my face was apparently clean, he scooted so he was sat behind me, encouraging me to lean on him. He wrapped his arm coyly around my shoulder, as I shuffled closer to him and breathed his clean, minty, cigarette scent in.   
“You two make me fucking sick,” Matt laughed.  
“Well, maybe if you finally got a girlfriend you would understand,” he smirked wildly, matching Matt’s vibe.   
“Nah, I’m too young and sexy for a girlfriend,” Matt shrugged.  
“Well, you won’t want to know that Kim was saying that she has a thing for soccer boys,” Gerard said referring to one of the girls I knew he had a past with. She was a girl that Matt had been infatuated with, and everybody knew it. When he’d found out Gerard had her first, he had been a little distraught but had cheered up when they had become close friends instead. I didn’t like him being friends with girls from his past, but who the fuck was I to stop him.   
“Keep talking, chav boy.”

Gerard and Matt had come to the agreement that Matt would remain quiet about the fact Gerard had kissed me if he continued to put in good words to Kim about him. I had almost become completely relaxed leaning against him, listening to the newfound banter between himself and my friends, before something inevitably went wrong.   
“Oh, Frank! Don’t fucking moan about it!” Nathan laughed as I grumbled about the fact that my friends were forcing me into going out for my eighteenth birthday. I didn’t want to do anything, well anything that included anybody else but Gerard. Although my friends did not drink much, they were not going to let me escape the expectations of society.  
“You can moan to me all you fucking want, baby,” Gerard whispered in my ear in jest, but with some seriousness to his voice. The others couldn’t exactly hear what he was saying, but they all knew it was suggestive. He had been making small but flirtatious comments for the past half an hour, with each sentence making the desire to kiss him even stronger.   
“I gotta go,” James quickly got to his feet, despite him previously mumbling he had nothing to do for the rest of the evening when Kenny had asked.   
“Why?” I asked quickly, to which he ignored. He began sulking off, pulling on his hoodie as he went, without so much as a goodbye.  
“He doesn’t hide it well, does he?” Kenny frowned.  
“Hide what?” I asked.  
“Nothing,” Matt answered quickly.  
“Well, I’m fucking sick of it whatever it is! I need to go and-“ I said getting to my feet.  
“No!” Gerard snapped quickly, pulling on my arm to keep me in place. “If he wants to act like that, fucking let him.”  
“No, G,” I pulled my hand away from his, my curiosity getting the better of me. I had abandoned him on Friday, I knew that much, but it wasn’t like I had done it for fun. Gerard had needed me more than James in that moment, and I thought he’d understood that. I ran quickly away from my group, chasing James down the grassy bank.  
“Hey!” I called, making him snap his neck around.  
“Fuck off, Frank,” he turned away from me. His words stung me, but I was also furious. I was so happy, why couldn’t he see that?  
“No,” I grabbed his arm harshly, turning him to face me. “I’m sorry I left you but he needed me.”  
“Oh, did he now? Were you so busy helping him that you just forgot to reply to any of my messages?” He replied, bitterly.  
“Yes!”  
“So busy fucking touching him,” he scoffed.  
“That’s not fair, James! You know how I feel about him!”  
“Yeah, but how do you think I feel? I have to sit there listening to him talk about fucking you, whilst he knows full well I can’t say anything back.”  
“What’s the difference between Gerard doing it and Matt talking about those tinder girls? Is it because I’m a boy, is that why you’ve been weird around me recently?”  
“You have no idea,” he rolled his eyes.  
“Fuck you, James. If you want to be homophobic and shit, then you’re not the person I thought you were.”  
“Fuck me, shut up, you know that’s not the case. I’d love you even if you were a fucking alien, Frank.”  
“Then why are you treating me like shit?”  
“I don’t mean to,” he mumbled, “please don’t be mad at me.”  
“I’m not mad at you, I just wished you’d let me understand.”  
“Maybe one day. For now, though, you have to trust me it’s not you that I’m mad at, I just need some space.”  
“Okay, but I miss you. Can we do something soon, just me and you?”  
He grinned at me, nodding eagerly.

****

It appeared the balance in my life could not last longer than five fucking minutes however, as I walked back to my friends to see Gerard had gone.  
“Wh- what?” I stumbled on my words, glaring at the space that he had been laying in.  
“He said he had to go,” Nathan shrugged.  
“Why?”  
“Dean or something. Fuck knows.”  
And suddenly, I did not feel quite as elated as I had earlier.


	32. I wanna be yours

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> SO, I have a flight to catch at 4 in the morning but I didn't want to go that long without updating everyone so I stayed up until 1am to finish this lol I am going to be so dead @ the airport (sorry if there's more mistakes than usual I edit this myself and I'm tired haha)
> 
> But yeah, I'm away for 4 days so I don't think I can update until Friday I'm sorry :( I'll still be available to answer any questions though!!

  
**\- G?**  
I simply text him, half expecting him not to respond. I knew that if he was with Dean, then he probably wasn’t going to be in a state to even remember my name. Still, as I lay in bed that night, I had to fucking try. I couldn’t get the way he had grabbed my arm out of desperation out of my head, making my heart almost ache with stupidity. I hoped I hadn’t fucked it up before anything had really begun. He had really come to find me, and I didn’t know how to quite process that information.

My phone alerted me to a text message, causing me to lunge from my desk where I had been attempting to revise. I was sick of reading about fucking cognitive behavioural therapy and osmosis because it might as well have been in fucking Swahili to me with the way I couldn’t comprehend the words. It didn’t matter how much I read over those stupid textbooks, nothing echoed around my head except the memories of his sweet, husky pleas.

 **\- What?**  
He responded bluntly. There was not a single emoji, endearing term or light-hearted slang about the message meaning he was mad.

**\- Where did you go?**

**\- Deans.**

**\- Are you still there now?**

**-No.**

I couldn’t bear it anymore, I had to hear his fucking voice. I decided to ring him, every drone of the dialling tone spiralling me into further anxiety. Just when I thought that it was going to ring out, I heard the muffled, yet slurred voice finally pick up.

“Gerard?” I frowned into the receiver, wishing I could just fucking see his face.  
“What?” He slurred back, barely being able to annunciate the last part of his question.   
“What happened?”  
“You spoke to James, I had to go.”  
“But you didn’t say bye!”  
“You were busy, Frank!’ He snapped at me.  
“Are you okay?” I sighed, “I’ll leave you alone, just let me know that you’re safe.”  
“I’m _fan-fucking-tastic_ ,” he replied crudely, clearly not being okay.   
“Oh,” I said in a small voice.  
“Look, I just need to, I don’t know. Maybe, I think clear my head,” he confessed, “it’s been a lot to comprehend.”  
“Okay,” I agreed, not feeling content with his answer but understanding it. We had such a rigid routine for seventeen years, that I didn’t blame him for being confused. If it were not for the way his words had softened, I think I may have freaked out myself.  
“See you tomorrow, bug.”  
“Bye, G,” I almost whispered as I felt the other end of the line go cold with the disconnect noise my phone made.

****

The next day at school, I was too nervous to do anything. I didn’t know if he was going to be warm or cold, I just hoped he wasn’t cruel. Obviously, he hadn’t come into the hall in the morning, he had no lessons. That didn’t mean that I hadn’t been disappointed about his lack of effort to see me. Still, he’d said he needed space, and I needed to respect that.

I didn’t actually see Gerard until the harsh, shrill bell rang after lunch, meaning we had our biology class together. I was pretty certain he hadn’t even shown up, right until I glimpsed up from the line filtering into the classroom seeing him already sat at the desk, winking right at me. The action should have been cringe-filled, but it was the way he did so effortlessly, leaning back on his chair, chewing contraband gum, that made my heart flutter for him.  
“Mr Way, why do you have chewing gum?” My teacher, Mrs Brown warned him.  
“Yeah, yeah,” he sighed hauling himself to his feet but taking the extra long way around the classroom to the bin to walk past my desk and press a gentle hand on the small of my back. As he spat out the gum, I couldn’t help but notice his wet lips and bit my own hard to control myself.  
“Franks,” Kenny waved a hand in front of my face. I hadn’t realised how much I had been zoning out at him, chewing my pen harshly, causing Joe Delo to stare at me.  
“Oh shit,” I blushed, “what?”  
“Mrs Brown’s giving a practical demonstration at the front of the room,” Kenny replied, alerting to me the fact that everyone was getting to their feet to gather around our teacher's demonstration station. I quickly snapped out of my daydream, dragging myself to my feet to join the back of the group. I needed to focus on the practical because it was based on burning glucose in food, and I didn’t understand a fucking word of the gibberish Mrs Brown was spouting. It wasn’t going to be that easy though, especially with the mood that Gerard was in.   
“Hey!” He came behind me, making me jump. As I had been one of the last to join the group, I wasn’t expecting anybody to be further back than I, especially not him with Joe glaring at him. In the crowd though, he managed to snake his hand around my waist, nuzzling into my hair slightly. I did try to focus on the way that Mrs Brown was burning a piece of chocolate at the front of the room, but it was futile as I leant against my best friend. The smell from the burning candy at the front of the room made the room sickly sweet, but not as sweet as the words he was mumbling into my ear.  
“I was thinking about you,” he said so close to me that his eyelashes tickled my cheeks. I kept my eyes glued to the practical, trying not to arouse any suspicions from anybody in the class. Sure, everyone knew mine and Gerard’s friendship was a little weird, but I think this would have been too far. “In bed…”  
“You weren’t meant to be thinking of me,” I tried to say cooly, “you were meant to be clearing your head.”  
“Yeah, I did clear my head, just in a different way.”  
“Huh?” I snapped my gaze away from the black, billowing smoke from the front of the room.  
“I wanna hear you moan like that, again.”   
I didn’t understand him. I never had, but now it was worse than ever. Last night he’d been telling me he’d needed space and now he was saying he needed me. Between the biology and the love of my life, I was beginning to become lost.   
“Gerard,” Joe snapped from in front of a couple of rows of people, in almost a warning tone. Gerard dropped his hand from my waist, obeying Joe’s command like he was his fucking master.   
“Wait for me after class, we’ll walk to Psych together.” He said before quickly fighting his way around the crowd to go and stand next to Joe. I’d lost Kenny, I always did in science practicals. He was even shorter than me so liked to stand right at the front. Fucking Kenny. I’d just had to face Gerard on my own, because of my friend's desire to be the teacher’s pet.

****

After an hour that dragged, I finally managed to escape the smoke-filled room. I tried to tell myself it was the fumes that were making my vision hazy, and not the way my best friend was staring at me, but nobody else seemed affected.   
“And, don’t you think it’s just so cool?” Kenny gushed, “it’s just like that’s what’s happening to our bodies when we play football- oh, hey, Gerard!” He waved eagerly as Gerard had been waiting for me outside of the classroom door. I had half hoped that he had forgotten because I almost could not control myself around him.   
“Sup, Ken,” he nodded.  
“That was cool, wasn’t it?” Kenny grinned up at Gerard.  
“Yeah, so cool,” Gerard fought a smirk, only failing when he met my eyes.  
“Anyway, I’ve got to go to History,” Kenny said, “see you little love birds later.”  
“Kenny, man,” I whined, cringing at my friend and his weird little idiosyncrasies.   
“Fucking Kenny,” Gerard shook his head but smiled at the way he skipped off towards the History department. I was almost anxious to be alone with my best friend, there was just something mischievous behind his eyes letting me know he was going to make the next hour of my life fucking difficult.   
“Should we go to psychology then, Frankie, my darling?” He grinned down at me, causing me to stare at him just a little too long.  
“Erh, yeah, sure,” I agreed reluctantly, following him up those rickety old stairs to our next classroom.

****  
I was correct. He was enjoying toying with me like a cat might do to a mouse it was going to eventually end up swallowing whole. It was like he was pulling me by the tail with his long claws, letting me think I was escaping before me dragging him back towards him. I had long given up on trying to decipher which neurotransmitter did what for which addiction because he’d moved his chair extra close to mine. He carelessly threw one arm around the back of my chair and kept the other under the table, leaning over his own leg to tickle my hand.   
“Boys, have you come up with any suggestions for addiction therapy?” Mrs Wisher began walking around the room before gradually stopping at our desk. I mean, she knew we weren’t getting any work done, she just didn’t know why. She didn’t know that under the desk, he was circling sweet patterns on my hand, that was gripping my own knee, to avoid it from shaking. We hadn’t really even been talking too much, he had just been staring.   
“I think it’s really hard to stop coming back to an addiction, Miss,” Gerard said casually, not dragging his eyes from me. God knows what she thought he was doing, fuck, I didn’t even know what he was doing.   
“You’re right, Gerard!” She said happily with his interaction with the lesson. Not that she knew, but Gerard found psychology hard to talk about. It wasn’t that he was bad at it, in fact, he was fucking amazing, but it was just hard for him to join in talking about the positives of therapy and medication when he found none of them to be beneficial for himself. Mrs Wisher didn’t know that though, she just thought he was another bored teenage boy, too occupied with winding his friend up to join in class discussions.  
“What do you think, Frank?” She quizzed me with a scrutinising gaze, looking down at me through her milk bottle prescription glasses. Just as she asked me, I felt Gerard’s hand trail under the table up to my thigh, stroking lightly as he went.  
“Erm,” I stumbled, doing my best to shake him off without her being suspicious. I never thought I’d say I missed the time when we were friends, but as his hand got dangerously close to my crotch, I decided it was easier. “about what?” I blushed.  
“Addiction therapy!”  
Fuck, if I knew anything about how to get over an addiction, I wouldn’t have my best friend’s hand on my dick, would I? I think I would have caused the poor, elderly woman to suffer a heart attack if I said that though.

I saw the fucker smirking as he continued to move his hand up and down my thigh, not exactly stopping anymore when he got to my crotch. Instead, he stayed there, just as Mrs Wisher was waiting for my say on the topic. He stroked his palm against my dick, which I hated to admit but was growing increasingly interested in his touch. I couldn’t believe that between my best friend and my own fucking body, I was being betrayed like this.   
“Erh, it sucks?” I attempted, knowing my answer was that of a novice and not somebody who had a psychology A level exam in a few months. Gerard appeared to have grown bored with simply stroking, now he was fully grabbing me through my school trousers as I tried to cross my legs to get rid of his advances.   
“Yes, but what do you think about moral issues and such?” Mrs Wisher frowned at me.   
“Erm, it- it’s a hard one,” I stuttered out, only making Gerard snigger harder next to me.   
“Frank, are you okay? You look flushed,” she fussed, leaning closer to try and see any signs of illness. I wasn’t sick, I just had annoying fucker determined to make my life as difficult as he possibly could. I needed to be more careful about what I wished for. Yes, his hand grabbing my semi had always seemed like a nice concept to me, but I had never exactly imagined my 60-year-old psychology teacher being there too.   
“I’m fine, Miss,” my voice reaching an almost shrill octave by the end of the sentence as he pushed down particularly hard with his hand. With a final attempt to get him off me, I shot my leg up but just ended up kneeing the table so hard it rocked and sent my pencil flying. All the capillaries in my cheeks betrayed me at once, my skin becoming hot and flushed with embarrassment and with the fact I was incredibly turned on in a fucking lesson.   
“Right, well, feel free to go and get some water if needs be,” she added warily, reaching down and picking my pencil up for me before moving on to the next table.   
“I fucking hate you, dick head!” I grumbled, pushing his hand a little too harshly off my leg.   
“Oh, Frankie,” he fake pouted at me, only winding me up further. “Don’t be mad at me because you got a rock on at Mrs Wisher!”  
“Don’t be grim!” I pulled a disgusted face at him, making him laugh at me.   
“Oh, then was that for me?” He half smirked, coyly.   
“I hate you,” I groaned, burying my burning cheeks in my arms on the desk.   
“I can make it up to you,” he matched my stance, his voice leaving goose bump on my arms.   
“How so?” I dared to ask. He didn’t verbalise his response, instead, he pulled my finger towards him, looking at me with his devilish eyes. We were mostly hidden from the rest of the class with the barrier of our arms, so he was more confident than before. He pulled my finger into his warm, wet mouth, sucking on it suggestively. It was my fucking finger, but it felt so good feeling the hollowing of his cheeks around it. It was only made worse when it touched the back of his throat, causing me to snatch it from his mouth before I made a bigger fool of myself. It was quite different to the last time I had my finger in his mouth at the party, and I had to say I preferred the latter. My dick jumped with anticipation as I had to sit and watch the clock tick by tragically slow. Every second felt like it dragged, especially when I could still feel his hand on my leg. By the time that stupid bellowing alarm rang signalling the end of class, we were both running out the door towards his parked up Audi. 

We didn’t say much, we just walked promptly to the car park, not so much as daring to look at each other. I feared if I looked at him, I would have to rip his clothes off him in the parking lot.   
“Gerard!” We heard as I reached for the handle of his car. I was so close, I could feel the cool metal in my hand, but yet so fucking far. I span round to see Ross running towards Gerard, waving something.  
“Yep?” Gerard replied, a little impatiently to be honest. I felt bad, Ross was a good guy but I think we both needed to be alone.   
“You left your homework in Geography!” He shoved the worksheet in his hand.   
“Thanks!” Gerard replied attempting to get in the car.   
“So, What are you guys up to?” Ross asked, causing Gerard to audibly sigh in frustration.   
“Tennis,” he replied quickly, causing me and Ross to both look at him confusion.   
“What?”  
“Erh, me and Frank have started playing Erm, tennis together.”  
“Oh, how cool! I like tennis!”   
“Oh, cool.”  
“Maybe I could join you guys sometime?” Ross asked hopefully. Fuck, if he knew the truth, I don’t think he would have been begging to participate.   
“Yeah, I mean tonight is a bit short notice but maybe next week?” Gerard replied awkwardly.   
“Yeah, sure! Just let me know, G.”  
“Okay, well we’re going a be late so...”  
“Okay, see you guys later!” Ross said cheerily having no idea what me and his friend were about to do. Fuck, I didn’t even know what we were going to do, but I knew for a fact it was _so_ not tennis. 

“Fucking tennis?” I rolled my eyes at Gerard as soon as we were coated in the safety of his car.   
“What?” He scowled, “I panicked!”   
“Now we have to actually play tennis!”  
“Well, tell me it wasn’t worth it!” He said in a devilish tone, taking the time to squeeze my thigh again. Okay, maybe it was worth it. 

I hated sounding like a teenage girl once again, but my heart was hammering against my chest as he drove with one hand on the steering wheel and the other on my leg. Despite the cool breeze, I had to open the window a little to stop myself from blushing. My cheeks were so flushed with blood, even my ears were beginning to tingle, which was only made worse as he squeezed my leg. I was almost vibrating with excitement as we pulled up on his street. His house was only a 10-minute journey away, but it had felt like an hour. Like before, I literally could not look at him because I wanted to ravish him right there in that car seat. I had to remember my limits though, I was still new to all of this, so I didn’t think car sex was exactly the smartest idea, just yet anyway. 

We got out of the car silently, me following him into the house like a fucking shadow.   
“Wait,” he shushed me as he unlocked his door. Not being able to touch him was like having an itch that I couldn’t quite reach. It was like that annoying feeling when the inside of your throat gets that tickly feeling, but there’s no possible way to get rid of it no matter how many times you coughed. Instead, all I could do was hopelessly follow him into his living room where I saw why he wanted me to be quiet. On the sofas sat Mikey and Pete, buried in worksheets with panicked looks on their faces.   
“Hey,” I said to them as Gerard tried to rush off downstairs to his bedroom. We may have been desperate, but it would have looked immensely suspicious if I’d ignored them too.   
“Hi, Frank!” Mikey grinned at me, and as usual, Pete grunted and blushed. I felt a little bad for the guy, he seemed to think I was just as terrifying as Gerard was. Pete was the kind of guy who Gerard used to be, but Mikey was a better friend than I had been, who would have never let him fall.   
“What you up to?” I asked jumping over the couch, taking a sip of the monster energy drink Mikey was drinking.   
“Well, I wanted to ask you actually,” Mikey said, thrusting a sheet into my hands. I looked down to see a diagram of legs with empty annotation spaces next to it.   
“PE homework, don’t fucking get it!” He whined.   
“Ah, well it’s easy Mikes!” I laughed “it’s a Plantaris tendon tear.”  
“But how can you tell?” He frowned.   
“Frank,” Gerard grunted in frustration from the kitchen.   
“One sec, G!” I said, holding my finger up at him, which he appeared to not appreciate.   
“No, _now_!”  
“Why are you in such a rush?” Mikey frowned at his older brother.   
“Tennis,” I smirked. “Gerard wanted to catch the tennis.”  
“Tennis?” Mikey frowned.   
“Yes! I wanted to watch fucking tennis!”  
“You’ve never liked tennis before...”  
“Yes, but now I’ve watched one game of tennis, I really want to watch more games of tennis. So, Frank, can we please go and fucking watch tennis and you can help these emos with their homework after?” He whined like a child. He was always going to win, I just liked toying with him like he had done with me for so many years.   
“Kay,” I simply shrugged. “I’ll come help you... after tennis.”

“Fucking cunt,” Gerard said, once we were behind the barrier of the basement door. He pushed me into it harshly as smashed his lips into mine. Fucking finally, that itch was being scratched but also my desperation was becoming worse. He did not bother to kiss me slowly, instead, he immediately graced my tongue with his own, moving them together so impatiently no rhythm could form at all. He pulled my school tie so tightly, it became knotted as he wound it around his nimble fingers. “I hate you,” he mumbled as he moved to kiss my neck, his voice reverberating off my throat, the vibrations causing shivers on my skin. “But I need you,” he sighed happily, working his tongue across my Adam’s apple. All I could do was throw my head back to expose myself further to him. As I whined a little, I appeared to encourage him, and he ripped my shirt open so forcefully the first two buttons popped off. They scattered to the floor making delicate pattering sounds which were masked by the sound of him sucking on my neck. It was becoming increasingly difficult to hide the bruises on my skin, but I always found it hard to care when he was in the process of making them. I had been somewhat lucky before, he’d done them so far that my shirt collar just about covered them, but this time they were right on the side of my throat. I couldn’t focus on that though, all I could concentrate on was how fucking good his mouth felt on me.   
“I’ve been waiting for this all fucking day, bug,” he said in my favourite husky tone as he pecked my lips impatiently. The way his hands had settled on the small of my back made it unbearable, I needed him to touch me and I needed him to do it soon. I reached up and wrapped my arms around his neck, encouraging him back towards his bed whilst kissing him with an open mouth. We tumbled backwards, his body falling carelessly on top of mine.   
“I wanna make you feel good, I want you to fucking understand this,” he almost growled at me, staring at me with his dark, amber eyes.   
“O-Okay,” I helplessly agreed, submitting to anything he wanted. We had both been noticeably turned on since being locked in his room, but now he was fully there. I felt how hard he was through his school trousers as he rocked against me, meeting each contact with another kiss. I trailed my hands down his back, enjoying the way his spine curved with each movement.   
“your shirts already fucked now,” I felt him grin against my lips as he finished ripping my shirt all the way. The popping noise of each button bursting open filling the air. He struggled for a moment to get the tightened tie over my head as I impatiently bucked my hips into him. Once it was over my head, he wasted no time and began kissing down my chest. He grazed his teeth over my collar bone, nipping and sucking as he went down further. I gripped the metal bars on his headboard to stop myself from almost forcing his head down more. His mouth was so fucking warm and wet on my skin, my crotch was literally burning with a lust filled anticipation for it to reach that area. For a moment, he struggled with the button on my school pants but did not retract his mouth. Instead, he sucked harshly around the skin on my hips causing me the groan as that stupid button finally popped open.   
“Fuck,” I cursed as he slowly began to unzip my zipper. I had attempted to stay quiet, I didn’t want to scar his brother and his friend for life, but to no avail. To shut myself up from the noises, I shoved my disregarded tie in my mouth and tossed my head back so he could not see. I didn’t need him to laugh at my inexperience, I just needed him to touch me. 

I didn’t have to wait for long because he did not even tease me. Instead, he pulled down my boxers giving me nowhere to hide. My dick was fully out, as he was only inches away from it. I internally panicked he was going to freak out, but it was a useless panic. Instead, he looked up at me, smirking at the way I was biting on my tie so hard I could have been mistaken for a starving lion clinging on to prey.   
“You like this?” He asked darkly, as he kissed the tip. His lips were warm and welcoming, but were so different from when they had kissed my lips. I couldn’t respond, all I could do was whimper at him. He gripped the base, beginning to move his hand up and down slowly, twisting as he went. The feeling was better than I remembered, causing me to scrunch my eyes up in pleasure.   
“Tell me what you want, bug,” he toyed with me, enjoying my awkwardness.   
“G-Gerard,” I groaned at him, as he kissed the tip again. “Please.”  
“I want to hear you.”  
“What?” I was becoming increasingly frustrated, already leaking in his hand due to my inexperience.   
“Say it. Say what you want.”  
“I want your fucking mouth,” I spat out, seemingly satisfying him enough. The sadistic prick. With that, he took the whole head in his mouth, sucking as he had on my skin earlier, meeting his stretched lips with his blurred fist. It took me a little while to fully comprehend the feeling of his mouth on me, but fuck, once I had, my silent plea was long forgotten. I didn’t care there were other people in the house, and I had given up on grabbing the headboard. Instead, I wrapped my fingers tightly in his hair, trying my hardest to not buck my hips into his fucking face.   
I groaned his name, pulling a little hard on his hair as I felt his cheeks hollow around me. He sucked harshly on the head, before taking the whole fucking thing in his mouth. I dug my toes in tightly, feeling myself hit the back of his throat for a moment. For a second, he pulled off almost completely, holding out his tongue against me whilst he used his hand to speed up the action. As I looked down at him, I didn’t know how I had questioned my sexuality. Just the look of his closed eyes, his long eyelashes fluttering as he took my dick into his mouth again, was sending me over the edge.   
“Gerard, Wait, Wait-“ I moaned, feeling the undefeated pleasure in the whole of my pelvic region. I tried to get him to stop, he wasn’t used to this and I didn’t want to gross him out, but he wouldn’t. Instead, he increased the movement of his hand, meeting his fist with his open, wet mouth. He sucked so hard, I felt his hollowed cheeks around me as it was too much. I wanted to fucking kick myself, my stupid virginity meant I had barely lasted 3 minutes, but I truly could not hold back anyway more. My moan thick and heavy filled the air as I finished, spitting out his name like a curse word. Much to my surprise, he didn’t pull back his lips, riding me through the biggest waves of my orgasm. He let my cum drop out the side of his mouth, not stopping his sucking until I had stopped grabbing his hair in desperation. I had been subconsciously bucking my hips into him which I had only realised once it was over.   
“Sorry,” I blushed, feeling like an utter tit.   
“Don’t be, that was hot,” he shrugged, wiping his wet and puffy lips with the back of his hand. “So, did I not tell you how good that felt?”  
“You did,” I felt my cheeks grow hotter trying not to think of all the times I’d imagine him doing that. Fuck my imagination, I knew nothing. It was more than I could have ever of dreamt, and it wasn’t over yet. I quickly pulled up my underwear and trousers, as he collapsed next to me.   
“So, was I good?” He waggled his eyebrow at me, the cocky bastard.   
“No, you sucked that’s why I finished in like 30 fucking seconds,” I chewed on my thumb anxiously.   
“You _were_ pretty quick,” he smirked at me. “I don’t blame you though, never sucked a dick before, but I’m obviously good at that too.”  
“Cocky prick,” I grumbled at him, getting to my knees and moving down the bed.   
“Franks,” he said, “you don’t have to do it back! I just wanted to do that for you-“  
“ _Hmm_?” I raised an eyebrow, both of us glancing down at his erection that was so blatant through his trousers.   
“Yeah, but like you’re a virgin so-“  
“But I want to,” I said pulling his shirt up and sucking on the skin on his stomach. I could feel how his breathing hitched under my lips, his skin taut with anticipation.   
“Okay, but honestly I might last a long time because, well, if your jaw gets tired it’s cool we can stop!”  
“Shut up!” I grumbled at him, finally undoing his pants and pulling them and his boxers down. Obviously, I had a dick, I had seen one before. I, however, had never seen one this close to my face before. I’m not going to lie, it was a bit daunting, but every risk I had taken so far had been worth it. With that thought in my head, I gripped him at the base of his dick and jacked my hand up and down for a while until I felt the confidence to go further. I was glad he had gone first, he had given me a few cues to follow. Plus, all those late night Larry fictions appeared to be not as useless as I once had believed. I wasted no time, I took half of his length into my mouth, adjusting my lips around him whilst distracting him with my hand. Once I gained more confidence, I began to suck down, only being encouraged by the way he let out a long sigh and tangled his fingers in my hair. I began to move my head up and down, sucking extra hard on the head. Once my jaw began to grow tired, I let my hand take control whilst I swirled my tongue against the head of his dick. I owed that move to Larry fan fiction, licking at the ridge and sending him into a frenzy. He appeared to have forgotten we were not home alone, instead, he was becoming increasingly vocal. The huskiness of his moans, and the way he whimpered my name was enough to turn me on all over again. With my new horniness, came a new wave of confidence and I increased my speed around him. I pursued my lips so tightly around him, I could feel his dick throb in my mouth. I let it repeatedly hit the back of my throat, thanking all those dental casts I’d had to do when I was younger for a suppressed gag reflex.   
“How the fuck-“ he began, but quickly gave up as I let the tip hit my throat for the fifth time. “Frank-“ He whined, But it was too late. Not that I minded. I felt him finish inside my mouth, luckily just as I pulled back slightly from my throat. The bitter saltiness of him filled my mouth, which should have been repulsive, but it was anything but with him. I attempted to swallow it because I knew his wide eyes were on me, letting a little bit escape me. I repeated his actions from earlier, pulling back once he was finished, and wiping my lips.   
“Sorry, What were you saying about lasting a long time?” I smirked.   
“Usually I do!” He protested, “no fucking way have you not sucked a dick before, you fucking jezzy!”  
“Jezzy?” I laughed, coming up to his lips. I was surprised when he kissed me, despite the taste of him still hot on my tongue.   
“You are not a virgin, no way.”  
“I am!” I protested.   
“Well, that gives me something to fucking think about when you’re not here then, doesn’t it?” He grinned in a rugged manner, sending those butterflies in my stomach into overdrive again. 

****

We lay in each other’s arms for an hour, sharing nostalgic stories and discussing the new things we could do in the future. He seemed to still be fixated on my virginity, but this time with the intentions of taking it. He never directly said it, he just hinted at it, but it was enough to send shivers of excitement through me. Once we’d ran out of words, he smothered me in kisses, dipping his warm tongue in and out lazily of my mouth. Things were getting serious again, both of us grabbing at each other and becoming hard again until we heard the tapping of heels coming down the stairs.   
“Shit!” He cursed quickly, pulling his trousers up from where I had begun to explore again with my hand. It bothered me a little he had perfected it like he had almost been caught many times before, but I had to remember he was with me now. His history was long, but I loved him enough to take it.   
“Put this on!” He threw a grey sweater at me, one that smelt strongly of his aftershave and cigarettes which distracted me enough. He had ripped my shirt, but I was going to have to let him do that more often if it meant I got to wear more of his clothes without looking desperate.   
“Gerard!” His mother knocked at the door.   
“Come in!” He said, combing his hair down desperately.   
“Oh hey, Frank!” His mother smiled cheerily at me, having no idea what me and her son had been doing only moments before. I was lay on my stomach in his bed trying to look casual, whilst he busied himself with work on his desk. “What’s this Mikey was telling me about you boys watching tennis?”


	33. You ever fall to sleep because you don't wanna be awake?

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sorry this chapter is stupid lol I just wanted to show the two very different sides to him

“Are you okay, baby?” Bethany came over, feeling Gerard’s forehead obviously concerned about his flushed cheeks and ruffled appearance.  
“I’m fine!” He batted his mother’s hand away quickly, “we were play fighting.”  
“Ah, you boys!” She smiled, “I haven’t seen you around in a while, Frank.”  
“Yeah, been a bit busy,” I lied, not confessing that the truth was that I was in love with her son. I did love his mom, but I hadn’t wanted our time together to come to an end. The way he as making me feel was indescribable, my head was spinning as if I was looking over from a sickening height and all I wanted to do was jump. I wanted to fall into him so deeply, that I could never return.  
“Well, you’re here now!” She grinned, “do you boys want any dinner?”  
“Erm, Frank will but I’ve gotta go get my homework off Ross,” he mumbled, looking down at his phone which I could see was becoming lit up with messages. I scowled at him, which obviously he chose to ignore.  
“What are you going to eat?” She frowned at her son.  
“Meeting Ross at McDonald’s I’ll get something there!” He expertly lied. He was so good at avoiding the topic of food, even I almost believed him.  
“Well, why don’t you bring Frank with you?”  
“Because he needs to help Mikey and Pete with something!” I couldn’t believe he could say something like that. The problem with loving someone so hard is that the same passion can be fuelled for hatred too. That’s why something as small as him lying to his mother about me, made me infuriated.  
“Okay, well Frank, is lasagne okay?”  
“Yes thank you, Beth,” I said through gritted teeth.

As soon as she’d left the room, I scooped up my abandoned backpack and went to leave him right there. I felt guilty, but I could have always told Beth I wasn’t feeling good, she would understand. I just suddenly could not stand to be around him anymore, I knew it would make it too easy for him to walk all over me again. He only had to flash me that one look, that stupid fucking hazel eyed guilty grin, and I’d fall right back into his arms.  
“Where are you going?” He asked in genuine bemusement, as if he hadn’t just declared he was going to ditch me for his friends yet again.  
“Ross gave you that homework earlier,” I snapped, pulling my hand out of his, which he had grabbed as I’d begun to leave.  
“Yeah, but I forgot the case study sheet didn’t I?” He frowned.  
“Huh?”  
“He gave me the sheet I needed to fill out, but I still need to get the information sheet about Yellow stone, bug.” I didn’t know if he was truthful or not, but the way he could spin words like silk made me feel guilty for questioning him.  
“If it’s Ross, why can’t I come with you?”  
“Because, Joe might be there I don’t know, plus, Mikey really needs your help!”  
“Since when have you given a shit about your brother's homework?”  
“He likes you, Frank. You get on with him more than I do,” he shrugged off. I mean it was true, but that was only because he’d stopped making an effort to understand his baby brother. His jealousy for the life he'd missed out on making it unbearable for him to be around him too long, just like a vampire being stood in the sun.  
“But-“  
“I’ll be back soon!” He gently kissed my lips, “just have some food with my family, and I’ll be like half an hour tops!”  
“Fine,” I grumbled, but let him go. He kissed our joined hands before detangling them and leaving.

——

  
Dinner with his family was nice. It had been a while since I’d seen his dad because he was a doctor who worked in the emergency department, meaning he was rarely available for a sit down meal like this. I sat and chatted away to him about the upcoming football season and the horror stories of his work. I felt bad, he was telling me about all the paralytic teenagers he had to deal with on a weekly basis, not knowing his son had nearly joined them after his acid trip.  
As usual, Mikey happily talked about his friendship group and the stresses that a thirteen-year-old boy can have whilst Pete awkwardly kept his head down out of nervousness. I felt bad for the guy, and I couldn’t understand why Gerard was so cold towards someone he should sympathise with him.

“Where is Gerard?” His father, Jonah, asked as if he’d only realised halfway through the meal that his son wasn’t joining us.  
“Getting some homework,” his mother replied.  
“Homework?” Mikey sniggered, obviously thinking there was more to the story. He knew all about his brother's drug habits, and he was less than impressed.  
“Yeah, and Frank stayed behind to help Mikey with his PE work,” Bethany confirmed.  
I felt Mikey kick me from under the table, as I tried to ignore his judgmental look. For a thirteen-year-old, he was a fucking smart kid.

——

“Oh my gosh! This song is sick!” I laughed, slugging on the sofa with two fucking thirteen-year-olds. Gerard’s half an hour had now turned into an hour and a half, but I’d cheered up anyway. Sometimes it was nice to regress into a child-like state, and the best way to do that was being away from the toxicity that growing up brought. Looking at Mikey, I still saw hope in his eyes. He was old enough to have that much-needed independence, but still young enough to be protected from how shitty the world could be.

To block out the noise in my head and the constant plaguing worry, I turned up the music Pete had put on. The fucking Misfits. When Gerard was younger, he used to obsessively listen to music like that, and I kinda missed it. I missed seeing the way his face lit up if we were in a shop and he distantly heard The Smiths playing or, how he’d excitably point out if someone had Misfits merchandise on in the street. I could see that same light behind Pete’s eyes, as if the lyrics ignited something in him.

“Jesus,” we all heard the door slam behind us, making my heart hammer as Gerard had returned, seemingly sober. “I haven’t heard this song in years!” I could not fight the grin spreading across my face as he waved an information sheet about super volcanos right in front of my face, flooding me with reassurance. He proceeded to come over and jump on me on the sofa, choosing not to move but instead spreading his weight all over me.  
“Gerard!” I batted him away, as he wriggled to get comfortable.  
“ _BUT THE BACK SEAT OF THE DRIVE-IN IS SO LONELY WITHOUT YOU!_ ” He sang loudly, ignoring the way Pete was looking at him with wide eyes.  
“You suck,” Mikey rolled his eyes at his brother, but seemed just as shocked at the interaction. Gerard had spent the past 3 years being a completely different type of person, so we were all surprised to see the old version of him so relaxed.  
“No, he doesn’t!” Pete said out of nowhere. The guy was nervous about speaking in front of me, so in front of Gerard he usually barely grunted two words.  
“See, Pete likes my singing!” Gerard laughed as I subconsciously tangled my hand in his hair. I quickly retracted the action when I saw Mikey staring at us inquisitively, almost forgetting that we hadn’t always been this way.  
“Pete likes the same dodgy emo shit as you did, hardly Hoodie Allen, is it?” Mikey laughed.  
“I see you inherited mom’s cringe music taste then,” he prodded his brother with his socked toe, not even moving an inch off me. To feel the warmth of his body tangled with mine set my heart racing again, but I had to play it cool. He smelt of clean washing powder, mints and cigarette; a toxic mix that could poison me into a frenzy.  
“Nah-“  
“Hoodie Allen is shit, Mikes,” Pete giggled.  
“Thank you!” Gerard leaned over to high five Pete, resulting in him blushing proudly. “Oh, sick!” He quickly got distracted again as _Dig Up her Bones_ started blaring through the speaker, making Gerard and Pete grin and Mikey roll his preppy eyes.

Gerard and Pete got lost in a conversation on old bands, finally appearing to get on after all this time. Pete, unfortunately, didn’t know Gerard before he had changed, and I think he was well and truly shocked to the core that he wasn’t this chav he pretended to be. They spoke until Gerard began to get sleepy and instead chose to lean back into me. I didn’t mean to, but I could no longer resist him. As his eyes slowly fluttered closed as he tried to resist sleep, I got lost in his long eyelashes and slightly parted lips.  
“Erm, Pete, did you wanna go out on the bikes?” Mikey asked his friend, who had become lost in his emo Tumblr account.  
“Sure,” Pete shrugged, “I’ll ask everyone on the group chat.”  
“Cool,” Mikey jumped to his feet, “let’s leave these two to talk about… tennis,” he stared at us, making me quickly snap my eyes away from his brother. He was wiser than I thought, and we had to be more careful. Gerard didn’t seem phased though, he simply moved even closer to me, snuggling in.

——

Once his brother and friend had left, he linked our hands, lacing and unlacing our fingers at a slow pace. He had almost fallen asleep on my shoulder, tangling our legs together up until he sneezed at it apparently woke him up.  
“How was dinner and stuff?” He asked, a little snuffly after his sneeze.  
“Good, how was Ross?”  
“Okay, but he’s worried about me. I keep telling him I’m fucking fine!”  
“He’s just a good friend, G!”  
“Yeah, but I have you, don’t I? I don’t need more people being worried about me!”  
“Well, you do a lot of stuff that makes people worried!”  
“Shut up about me! I am so bored of talking about myself! Tell me why you were listening to music with my thirteen-year-old brother and his little scene friend, you sad git!”  
“I dunno, that music reminds me of you,” I shrugged, which made him pull a face at me. “What?”  
“Yeah, the old me!”  
“I liked the old you, he was cooler and had better taste.”  
“What is your problem with my music taste? Just because I’m not like James!”  
“What is that supposed to mean?” I scowled.  
“Well, he thinks liking the Arctic Monkeys is a personality trait, and hearing the tragic little indie boy story is a little overdone.”  
“You like Arctic Monkeys!” I protested.  
“They’re okay,” he shrugged again, “but James refuses to acknowledge any other musician. Plus, he’s made you like that too!”  
“What’s that supposed to mean?”  
“You turn your nose up at everything that’s not musically pretentious! That’s not the Frank I knew back in the day, he’d always give everything a go!”  
“Just because I don’t like the grime shit you listen to!”  
“Nah, let me show you,” he grabbed his phone off the side. “It’s not as shallow as you think!”  
I didn’t believe him, but I wasn’t going to protest. I was just thankful he finally seemed passionate about something after spending the past few years trapped in a lethargic, uninterested haze. Fuck, he seemed really interested in the song that was playing. It wasn’t my thing, it was just some guy talking slowly to some shitty MIDI beat.  
“This is shit-“  
“Nah,” he shook his head, “listen, bug!”  
I pulled a face, completely baffled how he could call out the Arctic Monkeys and enjoy this shit. It seemed shallow and boring, like there was no feeling in the song at all.  
“This bit!” He said excitably, turning up his phone. If he was anybody else, I wouldn’t have been bothered about listening, but there was just something about him that I would do anything for; even listening to shit grime music.

“ _Brother I'm a careful, humble, reckless, arrogant, extravagant, probably battlin' with manic depression Man, I think I'm going mad again It's like I'm happy for a second then I'm sad again_ ,”  
The song blared out, as he looked away awkwardly.  
“Jheeze,” I said, unsure on how to respond to him.  
“Told you Dave wasn’t shallow, just you’re judgey to anything that hasn’t got Alex Turner involved in.”  
“Okay, okay,” I held my hands up, “maybe it’s not as shallow as I thought, but it’s still shit.” I stuck my tongue out at him, begging for the lightheartedness of the conversation to return.  
“Shut up, indie boy,” he flipped over and pinned my arms above my head.  
“Nah, as long as you like it, maybe it’ll grow on me,” I rolled my eyes, but was met with his warm lips anyway. I meant what I’d said, I didn’t really like his new music taste, but suddenly it made sense to me more why he listened to it. I had perhaps been a little too pretentiously quick to call those dark lyrics shallow when they were probably all that he had at some of his darker times. I couldn’t think about it too deeply though, because his lips slightly parted over my own causing me to sigh happily into his mouth.

Before things got heated, we were interrupted by his phone ringing.

DELO flashed up, causing us both to look awkwardly at each other, his lips still wet with our kiss.

“Answer it,” I forced a smile, sensing the anxiety that was forming in his mind.  
“But-“  
“Answer it, G,” I repeated firmly.

“Yo, Delo,” he said into the receiver as he switched to the persona I hated like a bilingual expert. “Nah, that’s Jesse’s beef ain’t it?” With his new terribly adopted linguistic skills, I couldn’t help the smirk that spread across my cheeks, resulting in him mouthing in me to fuck off, but still kissed my cheek in the process.

 

——

He slept over at my house that night, refusing to even leave my side right up until his friends came into school. Even then, it did not last long because he came over with a grin the size of the fucking moon at lunchtime.

“Guess what!” He said, excitably.  
“What?” I said, my mouth still full of my sandwich. I was just a little shocked that he had chosen to come over in front of his friends. Well, I was until I looked over at his table to see Joe wasn’t there.  
“So, I have this friend, she’s called Maisy,” he began and I instantly shut off, I didn’t want to hear about some girl he’d fucked.  
“Don’t wanna hear about your fuck buddies,” Matt verbalised my worries.  
“Nah! Maisy ain’t like that! She was friends with Amber at her old school right, and I heard she had a thing for little ginger soccer players!”  
Kenny’s face lit up with excitement, whilst mine fell.  
“Show me!” Kenny lunged across the table, grabbing Gerard’s phone where had had a picture of a shy looking girl, with tight blonde ringlets in her hair.  
“She’s pretty, right?” Gerard said.  
“Yes!” Kenny grinned, “why are you showing me this?”  
“Well, she was at Ed’s last night and I dunno why I’ve never spoke about you before to her. Anyway, I showed her a picture and long story short Kenny boy, you have a date this Friday.”  
“Gerard!” He yelled, jumping to his feet.  
“Who’s the fucking best?” He replied smugly.  
“You are! You fucking are!”

I tried to be happy for Kenny, I really did, but I was left cold by his words. I scraped the cheap, plastic chair against the shrill linoleum and simply left. I pushed past Gerard, not caring how pathetic I looked. As I went, I kicked my abandoned chair and stormed out of the big set of double doors, my hurting heart taking control.  
“Bug!” I heard him call behind me.  
“Fuck off, Gerard,” I said, sadistically enjoying the power. I felt shit, but him hurting me was becoming a familiar pain. I knew he hadn’t been getting that Geography worksheet, and to make it worse, the mention of Amber left me seething. I had become quite accustomed to hiding my jealousy over the years, but I had been foolish enough to think things were different now. I knew him better than anyone, I should have known one person would never be enough for him. He so carelessly mentioned her name to me, as if we hadn’t spent the night lost on each other's bodies. Heat spread throughout my whole body, leaving my head feeling like it was going to explode. I hated him. I fucking hated him.  
“What? I don’t get what I did!” He called, running after me down the hallway, despite people staring.  
“Dunno, ask Amber.”  
“Nah, don’t tell me this is what you’ve just had a fucking hissy fit in front of everyone over!” He did that annoying thing I’d seen him do to girls before, making them believe it was their fault for being hurt.  
“Well, it is what is, Gerard,” I shrugged, pushing my way into the bathroom. It was a rookie mistake, I knew I couldn’t escape past him, but I think I somewhat wanted him to grab me back.  
“Hey!” He hissed, grabbing my arm.  
“Fuck off!” I yelled at him.  
“No. Just tell me what you’re pissed about!”  
“You never fucking stopped seeing her, did you?”  
“When did I say I’d stopped seeing her?” He frowned, and suddenly I felt like a fool. A stupid, fucking fool. I knew he wasn’t loyal, I’d just been stupid enough to assume I meant more to him than some girl. If I wasn’t so pissed off, I would have been a wreck.  
“Fuck you,” I glared at him, not caring about masking my feelings anymore. Our friendship had become so confusing, it didn’t seem to matter anymore.  
“Frank!” He seethed in frustration but still spoke in a hushed tone. “It’s not like that!”  
“Well, tell me what it’s like then! You tell me you’re going to get Geography homework but you were just with the girl you say you’re in love with, and then you come over and fuck me about! I don’t get you, Gerard,” I bit my lip, hard, “but please, keep me out of your games, I can’t take it.” I was begging him, internally screaming at him to just leave me alone. It hurt being in love with him, but it was a lot harder when he was leading me on like that.  
“What games, Frank?” He frowned, “look, I can’t break up with her because Joe is suspicious about us anyway! I’m not like you, I can’t just accept this yet! I don’t touch her though!”  
“Huh?” I frowned.  
“I did go to get that homework last night and Amber was there, but since me and you have fucked about, I haven’t been near her like that!”  
“Do you expect me to believe that?”  
“Erm, yes, because I care about you?” He glared down at me, keeping my arm pinned against the wall to stop me leaving.  
“But- but-“  
“But nothing, Frank! If you wanna believe that, then you fucking do you, I’m not going to beg for your affections,” he quickly dropped my arm and lowered his tone as some random guy came into the bathroom.  
“You’re fucking frustrating,” I fumed at him.  
“And you’re not?”  
I didn’t have time to answer before Tom and Jesse came into the room.  
“You okay, G?” Jesse raised an eyebrow at how close and heated we appeared to be.  
“Yeah bro,” he shrugged me off, “come on, let’s bounce.”

With that, he left me staring after him feeling more confused than I ever had before. He told me he wasn’t seeing Amber in the way he had before, but I knew way too many girls that had fallen for his previous lies. I wasn’t them though, was I?

My choices were to trust him, and believe that I truly meant more to him than she did or I could cancel this whole thing. Now the choice was being dragged away from me, I felt desperately frantic to keep him loving me. The less he cared, the more I did. I felt as if a fucking insect was burying its way into my brain, driving me crazy with the niggling feeling that it left there. I walked over to the sink, splashing water on my face to calm down. I wanted him so badly, but I was so fucking confused. I hungered for his touch so much, I was like an addict shaking for the next hit. I needed to think, I needed to think long and fucking hard about this whole thing. I needed to clear my head and I needed to talk to him, otherwise, I was pretty certain I was going to go into a storm of feelings I didn’t think I could ever find my way out of. I stood by my point before, loving someone so fiercely could create a raged-filled passion that only his reassurance may break me out of. 

With that thought in my head, I snuck out the backfire exit door, suddenly not feeling sane enough to sit in my sports class anyway.


	34. Holy shit she smells like Heaven, been best friends since we were 11

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Just a few points -
> 
> * I was made aware that people can get uncomfortable by sex scenes (I'm sorry I was being ignorant) so from now on I'm going to include a subtle warning before and after just so people don't have to miss out :) So basically before and after I'm going to write "////" in bold just for a little warning. I hope this is the best way of pleasing everybody bcos it really means a lot that people actually read this!
> 
> * this chapter was inspired by Friday night when all of the people I based his friends on were out at the same bar hahaha what is my life?
> 
> third and final point- theres a lot of British slang in this chapter so I'm going to include a mini glossary at the start cos theres not enough characters here but feel free to skip it - urban dictionary is probably the best if somethings confusing (sorry I just wanted to write more slangy to highlight the difference between the two sets of friends!)

_**The glossary thing;** _

_**Mardy - like being moody but it’s more annoying to be called mardy it’s a bit patronising haha** _

 

_**Jezzy - It’s a short way of calling someone a jezebelle which is basically like calling someone a whore** _

 

_**Peng - just means nice or good looking** _

 

_**Roadman - It’s like a new generation of chavs in England like grime music and north face** _

 

_**Sick - Sick can also mean like cool as well here** _

 

_**Gimp - like a loser basically** _

 

_**Beef - like a problem basically** _

 

_**Lowe it - it means allow it which means let it go** _

 

_**Peak - means like feel really sad** _

 

_**Bare - a lot of something** _

 

_**Seen - it’s like confirming you’ve understood what somebody else had said** _

 

_**Fairs - just a shorter way of saying fair dos** _

 

_**Sound - like saying okay about something good** _

**(sorry back to the story)**

 

 

 

 

**\- Call me**   
**\- Call me**   
**\- Call me**   
**\- Call me**

I hovered my finger over the send button to my fifth text for a moment before giving in and sending him that one too. Once my anger had subsided, I felt sick. I’d jumped to a conclusion, and now he was back to hating me. I shouldn’t have even left school that day, I should have marched right into our Psychology class and heard everything he had to say. I shouldn’t have been so confident as to assume he would come crawling back to me, he crawled to nobody, especially somebody so willing to fall at his feet. I’d sat on my bed for hours, trying to dull my worries with excruciatingly loud music, but ultimately failing. What if I’d scared him back to her? What if he was with her right now because he’d realised I wasn’t emotionally mature enough for this? Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck.

Who text me next actually quite surprised me, however. Obviously, at 8 o’clock when my phone made a vibrating noise, I’d jumped to it as if it was about to grow legs and scurry away from me. I was confused when it was a number I did not have stored, so confused in fact, I couldn’t yet be hurt that it wasn’t Gerard.

**\- Hey, Frank, sorry if this is weird but it’s Ross.**

My first thought was that something had to be wrong like, Joe had found out or something like that. However, if it was so urgent, why had he not called like he had before?

 **\- Hi, what’s up?**  
I replied, thankful for the fact he could not hear the shakiness I knew my voice would possess.

**\- Well, you said something about joining your team for practices and I was just wondering when those started again?**

Oh, fucking soccer. How anticlimactic.

**\- On Saturday, early tho.**

**\- It’s fine, I worked on a farm all summer I’m used to early mornings.**

**\- You actually wanna come?**

**\- Yeah, why don’t you come over? I need to ask you some shit about it. G’s here…**

**\- Won’t Joe mind?**

**\- Not here, he’s ill.**

**\- Won’t Gerard mind then? He’s being mardy.**

**\- Nah? He’s the one who suggested it lol.**

That fucking boy was going to kill me one day, and I’m pretty sure it was going to be soon.

—-

Obviously, I was going to go to Ross’. I let myself believe I was strong for a hot second, but still, I found myself pulling on his grey sweater and my most expensive pair of trainers I knew that they liked and walking across the old bridge. I was nervous, and not just because the bridge to Ross’ house was rickety and archaic. Although Joe wasn’t there, Gerard’s friends weren’t the nicest group of boys I’d ever come across. They still insisted on tormenting me every day but I think the curiosity and the urge for Gerard not to hate me, made me somewhat braver. I could take the gay, football freak comments, just so long as he kissed me. Like I’d said before, my happiness was dangerously dependent on him, but he was the only thing breathing life into my sorry little soul. He could cut off that life support and steal my future breaths so easily, but all I could do was helpless commit myself to him more.

Once I’d gotten to Ross’ house after listening to confidence fuelling music in my headphones, I realised he was more like Gerard and I than I had thought. I was not judgemental, and obviously, I did not judge Gerard’s friends on the fact their families were not wealthy, but it always made me laugh when Gerard tried to fit in with them. His parents, between the doctor and the lawyer had never struggled to pay the bills, they had never sacrificed food and their holiday home on the East coast was enough proof of that. Still, his friends made him feel bad for that so he liked to keep it hidden. Ross’ house was even bigger than Gerard’s though, and it made me wonder how wrong I had gotten the dude. His wealth didn’t matter, it was just a little humorous to me that a guy that acted like a poverty-stricken, hard done by roadman actually resided in a massive barn conversion on the rich side of town. I knocked on the expensive gold door knocker as if I was entering some fucking gothic mansion or something, nervously waiting for the reply. I didn’t even know Ross that well, he’d just been smiling at me a little more than usual in school hours.

“Frank! You came!” He said excitably as the big, glossy black doors opened.  
“Yeah,” I forced a smile, despite the butterflies forming in my stomach. “Your house is like… really nice.”  
“Thanks! My grandad converted part of the farm when his produce business took off,” he shrugged off awkwardly as if he had become well too accustomed to diminishing his grandfather's accomplishments in front of Joe. Nothing said rich little white boy quite like a barn conversion inheritance, and I don’t think that Joe could quite let that sit.   
“Sick,” I said instinctively taking off my shoes before I reached the pristine white hallway carpet making Ross smirk a little. “What?”  
“You and Gerard are the only people to do that, just funny,” he shrugged again, leading me down the extravagant hall to where a cluster of voices could be heard. Although there were multiple of them, there was only one high pitched giggle my tired brain could focus on.

I had obviously wondered what his deal was. He hadn’t replied to me, yet he had insisted to Ross that I came over. It became apparent as to why though, right when I walked into the avant-garde decorated living room to see him sat there with red eyes and a slumped stance.  
“Frankie,” he slurred, stumbling to his feet, “you came!”  
“Yes,” I replied a little bluntly, trying to move away from the strong marijuana stench he was bringing with him. The room with black and gold decor that probably cost more than I would like to think was only contrasted more by the four intoxicated teenage boys gathered around the lime green bong in the centre of the room. I glanced at Ross, he seemed displeased but knew better than to try and stop them.   
“Stop being cunts,” Gerard grabbed my wrist a little harshly, dragging me to others, “I told you he’s not as big of a gimp as his friends!”

—-

I did not encourage Gerard’s insults to my friends, but the way he traced a light circle on my leg under the table stunted my words of protest. To be honest, his friends weren’t even being that bad. Yes, they were all high and giggly, but none of them made any sly comments as they did at school, in fact, quite the opposite.  
“Come on, Frank,” Tom pushed the tall, translucent glass into my face. Just the smell was enough to repulse me, let alone the murky looking smoke water swirling in the bowl.   
“Nah, Lowe it Tom,” Gerard shook his head, using that fake accent he liked to produce whenever his friends were around. “He’s got football and shit ain’t he?”  
“No,” I said quickly, enjoying toying with him. The way I was quick to protest his claims made him look at me like thunder. Gerard was always pestering me to be more open to new experiences to a degree, but he said himself, drugs are a no go. He told me he would be furious if I ever touched what he claimed to be so harmless, even weed, the weakest one of them all. I wanted to get a reaction out of him though, and I knew how to fucking do it. “I’ll do it!”  
“Frank,” he warned me with dark eyes.  
“Sorry, are you his fucking baby sitter?” Ed mocked Gerard’s concern for me whilst Tom began prepping the weed in the tube ready to be lit.   
“Nah, it’s just not his thing, is it?” Gerard scowled, “don’t do it bug- I mean Frank, if you don’t want to.” No. He just didn’t want me to do it because he felt weirdly protective over certain things. Gerard was okay with hurting me himself, I knew that because he liked to do it a lot, but anybody or anything else he would act weirdly possessive. Nathan was my only friend who was into the stuff, but I thought it through quickly and decided there would be no harm in it. I wanted to experience something thrilling that didn’t have Gerard attached to it for once, even though the furious daggers he was shooting at me did turn me on just a little.   
“So, you inhale it here, bro,” Tom said, his own eyes struggling to focus on the bong.   
“I know,” I shrugged nonchalantly even though the only reason I knew was because of Nathan.   
“Cool,” he confirmed, lighting the tube with his stubby fingers and rusted Zippo lighter. It was sad in a way, Tom’s body had become stained with the drug use already, and the guy was only eighteen. His eyes looked unfocused and blown, whilst his fingers were stained a nicotine yellow and shaked for more of the stuff that was killing him. Due to his brother success, I think he had given up on himself. Drugs became easy to get for him and sheltered him in a way his family never did. I think I may have felt sad for the boy if he wasn’t so insistent on usually making my life a misery. I tried not to dwell and instead put my mouth into the long neck of the device whilst Tom lit up the substance, filling the bong quickly with the toxic smoke. It was approaching the neck quickly, like some sort of impending flood, but the look on Gerard’s face only caused me to inhale harder. It was like when I got my nose pierced and changed my hair, it was something he could not stop, but something that ate him up inside. He needed to learn I was my own person. His love for me followed that stupid rubber band theory, the more I pulled away, the quicker he would come springing back to me, nipping at our fingers in the process. Cigarette smoke was one thing, but I don’t think anybody had quite warned me how much thicker the smoke from bud was. It intrusively forced it way down my throat, snaking its way down into my lungs despite their heavy protest. I tried to look cool, but I still spluttered around the bong causing them to snigger.   
“Nah, hold it here,” Jesse leaned forward placing one of his strong hands on my chest where my lungs were. The action was obviously platonic, but Gerard shot to his feet and stormed out the room.  
“What’s his fucking beef?” Ed glared at Gerard’s exit, not understanding he was so furious because his friend had touched me. He was fucking jealous, but he didn’t have a right to be. I wasn’t the one with a girlfriend and a guilty secret.   
“Fuck him,” I shrugged, inhaling again this time to much more success.

—-

“I’m gonna go find G,” Ross furrowed his brow and got to his feet. He claimed he wasn’t smoking because he had to pick his little sister up later as his parents were on holiday, but I think he was just paranoid. I tried to care that Jesse, Tom and Ed were treating Ross’ beautiful home like the decrepit park, but I struggled with the way the drugs were turning me into an arrogant person I would usually hate. The smoke had quickly furrowed it’s way to my brain, altering the neurochemicals there and leaving me with a dizzy high. In that moment, I regretted ever questioning Gerard’s obsession with the damn things, because I had never felt so good. I had not got the same sickness that alcohol had brought, but instead a heavy set of eyelids and the insistent need to giggle at everything the others were saying. I don’t think mine and the other's humour were exactly the same, in fact, they ran parallel, but the weed made our paths cross like tangling vines that caught us all and pulled us in like quicksand.   
“He’s fine,” I slurred, my voice sounding slower and a fuck lot louder than it usually did. I didn’t know if that was an accurate representation, reality had become warped to me at that point.   
“Yeah, Frank’s right Ross, he’s just in one of those moods,” Jesse shrugged, furiously shoving crisps in his mouth to satisfy to impending hunger he had developed. With the way Gerard had developed an aversion to food, I’m surprised he even touched the drug at all, because we all just felt fucking ravenous.   
“What mood?” I questioned, curious that Gerard let them see any side to him that wasn’t the partying obsessed nymphomaniac.   
“He sometimes just gets all shut off, fucking weird though,” Tom confessed, helping himself to more weed.  
“Yeah, it was like every Friday after he’d been with you, he’d be fucking quiet until Deano brought the coke round!” Ed shook his head, “we thought you two just argued all the fucking time or something.”  
“No, I don’t-“ I searched my mind for an answer, but failed to find one.  
“Him and Amber are on the fucking rocks bro, I think even that jezzy would feel peak to let that one go, she’s straight up fire!” Jesse said, making me think harder. With my new found high, came the opening of a new layer to my mind. In psychology, we learnt that the mind is made up of seven layers in some sort of topographical model and that we as humans repress the thoughts that may damage our psyche, leaving only 1/7th accessible to us. I often thought that Gerard was some sort of superhuman who was too in tune with his mind for his own good, whilst I only dipped in the second level to my mind. The drugs though, they changed that, and I began seeing things I had never let myself stumble upon before. The way I felt about him was crazy, I loved him, but I fucking hated him. The homoerotic tension between us had built up to the point I didn’t know how to handle him. I wanted to knock him off his feet with affection, right after I’d punched his fucking lights out.   
“Nah, G can do better than her,” Tom said smugly. “He’s got that pretty boy look, ain’t he?”  
“Yeah,” Jesse shrugged, “but no ones good enough for him. I mean, I know were all cunts to girls but that’s because we like fucking. He, I don’t know, he’s just not satisfied with them.”  
“Must be a friendship thing,” Ed glanced over at me.  
“Oh shit! I forgot about that!” Tom huskily laughed letting a cloud of smoke escape his thick lips.  
“Huh?” I queried. It was apparent they were talking about me with the way they were looking at me, but it wasn’t exactly like I had a long list of ex-girlfriends.  
“Hannah!” Tom said, “she was Peng!”  
“Yeah, and every time we ask G why you called it off he gets bare pissy!” Jesse added.  
“Ah,” I said awkwardly “she was just bare clingy, yano?” I internally kicked myself with the way I was speaking, but it was almost as if the drugs had enchanted my tongue to speak like that. I also hated the way they were mocking Hannah, it wasn’t her fault that she wasn’t Gerard.   
“Ah, seen,” Tom giggled. “Ain’t you a virgin?”  
“No!” I said defensively. I mean, I was still kind of a virgin but kind of not one, but also I couldn’t exactly say the name of the one who I had those experiences with in front of them, “I just didn’t like her.”  
“Fairs, that’s what I like about you, Frankie boy.” Jesse placed a heavy hand on my shoulder, his strong muscles flexing through his tight white shirt in the process. No wonder Gerard always felt insecure about his body when he was constantly around gym obsessed freaks like this.   
“What?” I raised an eyebrow.  
“You don’t give a fuck if anybody likes you, you just live your best life. I keep telling G he needs to be more like you!”  
“What do you mean?”  
“Well, he’s just been a bit down, I dunno.”  
“Told ya, it’s because he’s not fucking Amber at the minute,” Jesse sniggered.  
“What?” I frowned.  
“So basically yeah, they’ve been arguing because he keeps disappearing places and she thinks he’s cheating. He’d tell us though, wouldn’t he? Gerard always cheats, but he always fucking tells us when he does.”  
“Ah,” I said awkwardly. It was awful, but I was feeling cocky enough to be happy with the fact he had not exactly lied to me. Amber was not evil, she was just a bitchy young girl who didn’t deserve to be wrapped up in Gerard’s self-destruction. I loved him though, I wasn’t going to give it up, despite how guilty it made me feel.   
“Has he told you who he’s fucking?” Tom asked.  
“Wh- what do you mean?”  
“I told ya, he keeps disappearing then coming back all dazed and ruffled and that shit. Like yesterday he had that love bite, didn’t he? Then he got fucking fuming with me when I jokingly said I was going to tell Amber!”   
“Oh,” I mumbled, “no, he doesn’t talk to me about sex.”  
“Fucking lucky, we can’t get him to shut up about it,” Tom rolled his eyes.  
“Oh, my days!” Ed giggled, “like when he was telling us that he had Chloe bent over the-“  
“I need to pee,” I shot to my feet quickly, not wanting to hear any more of this. Gerard previously told me about what he did with those girls, and I had found a way to ignore the reality of it especially when I remembered his hands all over me. I ignored the fact that everybody knew I didn’t know where the bathroom was, and just left as quickly as I could.

—-

I wasn’t going to the bathroom, I was going to face the fucking music. I had wound Gerard up enough that I knew he wanted to explode at me, but he couldn’t quite do that in front of everyone. I knew we were going to end up fighting or fucking, and I didn’t know what I wanted more. I was so high, I sluggishly walked up the large central set of stairs, clutching on to the bannister like a toddler to a parents hand.   
“Frank, are you alright, man?” Ross asked, appearing from the top of the steps. He’d emerged from a room to the left, a room that had Joy Division blasting from under the door.  
“ _She’s clinging to the nearest passerby she’s lost control again_ ,” the song I only knew from Gerard’s darker days flooded into the hallway.  
“Yeah,” I slurred. “I assume from Ian Curtis’ drone that he’s in there?”  
“Ian Curtis, _who_?” Ross frowned. “Yeah he is, but he said he doesn’t want to see you.”  
“Well, tough tits,” I felt a surge of confidence as I pushed past Ross. “Look,” I added feeling guiltily, “he’s complicated and he’s in a funny mood. I’ll send you over that information about football though and, maybe you could come with me on Saturday? I’ll get Grimshaw to add you to the fixtures!”  
“Really?” He beamed, moving aside and letting me through.  
“Yeah, bro! Just let me sort this mard arse out and I’ll text the coach!”  
“Thanks, Frank!” He grinned, “can we not tell Joe?”   
“Do you think I’m stupid?” I smirked, confirming that I most definitely would not be telling Joe.

**\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\**

I could tell Gerard was pissed off just by the way he was hunched up with his hood pulled tightly over his head. I didn’t realise quite how angry he was though until I noticed his hands were trembling as he was trying, and failing, to roll a cigarette.   
“Ger-“  
“Fuck off, Frank,” he spat at me. “Do you think you’re big and clever touching that shit?”  
“It was weed Gerard, I hardly shot up some heroin, did I?” I argued back, the drugs making me angrier than I should have been. It was me who should have been grovelling, I was the one who had not believed him about Amber earlier.   
“Don’t be a smart arse,” he kissed his teeth at me, getting his phone and trying to leave.  
“Joy Division?” I raised an eyebrow at the music he was attempting to shut off, but could not quite manage it with the way he was angrily shaking.  
“Yeah, just call me Pete Fuckin’ Wentz, baby boy,” he laughed cruelly, still trying to storm past me.  
“Why are you listening to this? You said it was emo the other month!”  
“Because you stress me out!”  
“Why do you fucking care?”  
“Because I care about you!”  
“But you do it! Nah, Gerard, you do worse! You do acid and make me come over and talk you off the edge. You’re so addicted to those stupid fucking drugs that you need coke to calm down from bigger highs! Do you not see how fucked that is?” I snapped, my feelings escaping like water out of a broken levy.   
“You don’t fucking understand shit, Frank!”  
“Nah, you’re just hypocritical!”  
“No, I do drugs because I’m already broken. You’re too good for this! You’re too good for any of us wasters here! I don’t want you to touch any of the shit that ruined my fucking life because I care about you too fucking much, are you happy now?” He kicked the door out of frustration, not even flinching when it caused a large bang.   
“You don’t get to decide that.”  
“I do! I fucking do! You’re mine, Frank, all fucking mine.” His eyes turned dark as he closed the distance between us and kissed me fiercely. It was strange, the moment was so suspenseful I hadn’t realised how in each other's faces we had gotten. I should have been freaked out by the way he was talking about me like an object, but I just found it a turn on. I wanted to be his. Nothing else, I just wanted to belong to him. My toes dug harshly into the carpeted floor as we stumbled backwards enough for him to slam the door to what was most likely Ross’ bedroom. He pushed me so harshly into the wooden door, the metal knob dug into my back and was probably going to leave some sort of bruise, but I didn’t care. All I cared about was tangling my fingers to my free hand in his hair whilst he bit my lip so hard, I think we both tasted the bitter metallic essence of blood. His stance was attractive to me, he had one hand to the side of me resting heavily on the door, whilst the other pinned my other arm above my head. He held my wrist with such force, it hurt but I needed the pain to control my aggression. We were not kissing because we loved each other at that moment, we were kissing because we were both fucking furious at one another. The drugs in my system just left my body more sensitive than it had ever been before, his tongue battling against my own and leaving tingles in my mouth like tiny poppers. He whimpered in frustration as our teeth clunked together, but then proceed to bite my lip for a second time.  
“Fuck you,” he groaned against me but proceeded to push his crotch into me.

I gasped into his mouth when I felt how turned on he was, just exactly the same as me. Things were so heated before, our bodies needed a release and they fucking needed them as soon as possible.   
“Fuck,” I moaned a little too loudly as he pushed our dicks together at exactly the same time that he moved to suck on the skin at my neck. His grip was becoming even tighter on my wrist.   
“You’re fucking mine,” he practically growled at me, “Jesse can get his fucking hands off you.”  
Like I’d said before, Jesse was touchy guy, but he was also very fucking straight. I don’t know why it had bothered him so much he’d place a couple of touches on me, but I liked the consequences of it. He proceeded to bite down on my skin right below my ear to my collar bone, swirling his tongue over the sensitive areas he left whilst shoving his hand down my jeans without any apprehensiveness. He did not tease me in any sort of way, instead, he slipped his hand beneath my boxer shorts and began stroking me quickly, and with pressure.   
The pleasure was indescribable despite it being messy and rushed with limited space with my jeans, but it was more the great anticipation and the relief I could think about. He hadn’t kissed me for what felt like a lifetime, so when he had, it had felt like everything. I threw my head back, hitting it harshly against the wooden door but embracing the dull ache that it left.   
“G,” I gasped, “stop!”  
“Hmm?” he raised an eyebrow stopping his hand, but continued to kiss my neck.   
“They’re gonna hear us!”  
“Is that a bad thing?” He kept his eyebrow raised smugly, his eyes looking devilish and ready, his hand squeezing me slightly causing me to roll my eyes back ever so slightly.   
“G, we should,” I panted heavily as he progressed his movements and began to jack me off with some speed again. “Fuck it!” I declared, grabbing his face forcefully and bringing him to kiss me again.   
He smiled slightly but was quickly distracted by the way I sucked his bottom lip. I think it was the drugs, but I had gained more confidence than before. The suck quickly turned into a nip when he turned his hand in just the right way, catching the sensitive area at the head of my dick and causing me to whimper his name.   
“It’s fucking hot you that you wear my clothes, I’ve always thought that,” he smirked against me, pushing me further into the door. “It makes me know you think of me even when we can’t be doing this. It makes me know that you’re thinking about this.” He trailed his lips to nibble my ear lobe, sending tingles down my whole spine. I had been subconsciously bucking my hips into his hand, my jeans and boxers slowly slipping down my hips giving him more room to work with. The heat he was causing in my groin was spreading all down my legs in waves, making my knees grow weak with utter pleasure. It felt so good it was becoming difficult to kiss him, instead, I just kept biting at his neck, burying my face deep within the crook to mask my profanities. I felt bad for Ross, but with how good my best friend was making my body feel, I was finding it difficult to care.   
“I think about-“ I panted heavily, my hot and sticky breath leaving goose bumps on his skin. “I think about you all the time.”  
“What do you think about, bug?” He asked me in that slightly husky voice that drove me crazy. I couldn’t verbalise a response, all I could do was moan in his ear like the bitch that I fucking was. It was like I’d forgotten that any of his friends could have walked up at any moment, or maybe I just didn’t care.   
“Faster?” He said, barely above a whisper. When I whimpered a vague yes, he only slowed down. The sadistic prick enjoyed the way I begged for his touch, it was written in his eyes.   
“That’s what you get for purposely making me look like a mug,” he smirked at me, and the way I gripped on to his shoulders tighter. I was gasping, and it was only made worse with the way he twisted his hand around me. Despite his decreased speed, I felt myself teetering on the edge. I gripped him tighter to me and bit down a little too hard on his taut jaw as I felt myself cuming.   
“Fuck,” I couldn’t help but spit out, burying my face in his hair as the most utterly irresistible pleasure flooded my body. He continued to stroke me through my orgasm until I let go enough of his hair and shoulders that he could retract.   
“Ow,” he smirked, “virgin.” He mocked me, but not with the same anger he had before.   
“Sorry,” I blushed profusely when I remembered the way I had been like putty in his hands.   
“It’s fine, I think you might have just ripped out some of my hair,” he laughed a little, running a hand to sort out the strands I had been yanking on.   
“Sorry,” I said again, losing every ounce of confidence I’d had in the last few moments.   
“Shut up, it's hot!”  
“What is?”  
“That no ones fucking had you before, I just- no it doesn’t matter,” he pulled back a little, avoiding my eyes.   
“What?”  
“It’s weird, bug, I don’t know-“  
“Fucking tell me!”  
“I think about fucking you all the time, like, more than I should think about fucking my best friend.” The tone of his voice was dark, and he had that scrutinising gaze to match. I was still basking in the waves of pleasure from before, but feeling how hard he was against me was turning me on all over again. I wanted to have sex with him more than anything, but I did not dare to confess my feelings back to him, not yet.   
“Erm, I think we already fucked up the boundaries of friendship,” I mumbled, reiterating my point by pecking at his lips. They were just so wet and hot, I could not resist myself from covering them with my own. He was turned on, his cheeks and body gave that away, but now I had the power. “How long?” I toyed, beginning to work on the skin on his neck with my teeth and tongue.   
“Hmm?” He sighed happily, exposing the skin there a little more.   
“How long have you thought about fucking me?” I tried to match his husky tone, the weed taking control again.   
“Erm,” He said awkwardly, “It’s weird, I don’t really wanna say.”  
“Tell me,” I shocked him, and my self by suddenly dropping to my knees. I slowly pulled down his zipper, cupping his hard dick through his jeans and moving my hand slightly. “And I’ll do something in return.”  
I glanced up through my dark fringe, trying to match the eyes he had perfected, letting the stray hairs fall into my face. He’d unwillingly began stroking my hair, cupping my cheek and subconsciously encouraging me to do what we both knew was going to happen. I was obviously going to give him anything he wanted, I just wanted to know he thought of me first.   
“Ever since I was old enough to fucking know what it was. You used to drive me crazy when you’re all sweaty and hot from that fucking stupid game, bug, why did you think I stopped going?”  
“Because you stopped caring,” I confessed, kissing the soft skin on his hips.   
“Nah, baby, it was quite the fucking opposite. I cared too much.”  
“Then why didn’t you kiss me sooner?”  
“Because, _fucking Jesus_ ,” he whimpered as I sucked down harder than before. “Because I didn’t think it would end like this, I didn’t think you wanted me like this.”  
“Oh baby,” I toyed, fucking bewildered where my confidence was coming from “I always wanted you.”  
My response was daring, and I did not want to hear what he had to say to it. Instead, I pulled down his trousers and boxers, placing my hand on the base of his dick and my lips around the head. It appeared my plan worked because he could not talk, just smirked and tangled his fingers in my hair. I obviously had only sucked his dick once before, but I think my built up lust for him over the years gave me the ability to do things I think that shocked even him. I wasted no time, instead took his whole length up to my bunched up first into my mouth, letting it hit the back of my throat and humming around him.  
“Shit,” he moaned, pulling at my hair and pushing his own head back into the wooden door. His eyes fluttered closed when he looked down and saw me looking up at him. “I’m not fucking lasting long if you look at me like that.”  
I wasn’t really sure what he meant, but I carried on doing whatever the fuck it was. It wasn’t like I wanted this to be over quickly, but I was so hungry for him I could not slow down. Plus, I still felt a little awkward at the fact that all of his fear-evoking friends were only feet away. I was careful to avoid my teeth, but I replicated something I had read about many times and pushed him to the side of my cheek, pulling off slightly to then suck on the head extra harshly. I figured it worked because like me earlier, he had begun repetitively moaning and bucking his hips towards my face. With my hand that was not touching him, I reached it up and cupped his balls like he had done to me the first time we had hooked up. I had no idea it could feel good, but it really fucking had so I did it to him. My jaw began growing tired, but I was spurred on by the way curse words and groans were falling from his open mouth. I pulled back a little, sucking on the head again whilst I sped up my strokes of him to give in to what he subconsciously wanted. He liked to boast how long he lasted, but it was almost as if he was a near virgin. I felt him throb in my mouth, especially when I ran my tongue against the prominent vein. I only met my lips with my hand a few more times before I felt his whole body stiffen and his grip on me get tighter.   
“I’m gonna- _fuck me_ -“ he cried out, too loudly to be subtle if they were listening, but being too turned on to care. I felt him flood my mouth as I awkwardly let it come out the side and swallowed as much as I could. I may have had head skill I didn’t know I possessed, but I wasn’t fucking great at that bit. It wasn’t as gross as it should have been, it was more that there was a lot of it. Still, I continued to suck until he was done to only be dragged up by my hair to give him a salty, messy kiss.   
“Does it not gross you out to kiss me like that?” I pulled back, panting slightly.   
“Usually with like other people I dunno, but with you, it’s kinda hot,” he shrugged, his flushed cheeks turning redder with his confession.   
“I want you to fuck me,” I blurted out.  
“Oh yeah?” He flickered his eyes to meet my own and then to my lips. “Well, hopefully, that’s gonna happen very fucking soon, but I want you to be ready.”  
“I am ready!” I protested.   
“Nah, I want you to be really fucking certain, bug” he placed a chaste kiss on my nose. “And right now you are fucked, so it’s a no baby, sorry.”  
“Why?” I whined.   
“Because you’re high! Look at your eyes, looks like you’ve got fucking hay fever!”  
“Yeah, and?” I pissily scrubbed at my eyes trying to push him back but failing. He kept his arms laced tightly around my hips, placing soft kisses all over my face.   
“I told you, I don’t wanna take advantage of this, I want- no I _need_ you to be sure, baby,” he settled his lips softly on my own.   
“I love it when you call me baby,” I confessed, just giving in and hugging him finally embracing the love that I felt. With our release of hormones, there was no anger, I just wanted to cling to him. 

**//////**

—

Not long after, Gerard decided we should go downstairs because we had been a weirdly long time. We had decided it best to pretend we had argued but that was really fucking hard when I felt the obsessive need to hold him. It wasn’t just me though, he tangled our fingers together and almost seemed pained when we had to let go. We’d left it so dangerously close that we were right outside the living room door before finally letting go of each other. He placed a messy kiss on my cheek before entering the room.   
“Yo, me and Franks are gonna bounce he’s gotta help me with some psych homework,” he announced confidently.   
“Erm, everything okay?” Ross queried, glancing at the abnormal space between us. There had to be that space though because otherwise, I would have melted into him.   
“Yeah it’s sound man, just you lot need to stop leading my little bestie astray,” he smirked.   
“Nah he’s sound, G!” Ed said, “why didn’t you tell us your boyfriend was cool?”  
Well, it appeared who I was when I was high was now enough for them.   
“Erm, I fucking did!” Gerard protested, ignoring the boyfriend taunt. It shouldn’t have, but it sent the butterflies in my stomach into a frenzy.   
“Frank, why don’t you come to that Halloween party on Saturday?” Tom asked.   
“What party?”   
“Delo’s parents are away again so he’s having a party, you could come with Nathan or something,” Tom confirmed.   
“Nathan?” I pulled a face.   
“Nathan’s brother is seeing Joe’s sister, did you not know?” Jesse asked.   
“No!” I frowned, feeling a little angry at Nathan for keeping his apparent friendship with Joe a secret.   
“Don’t be pissy, Franks, it’s not like that! They barely know each other! But I want you to come, and Nathan’s your best bet of an invite,” Gerard said, throwing his arm carelessly around my shoulder, making me more aware of how much control I didn’t have.   
“What makes you think I want an invite?” I scowled.   
“Because think of the things we could do... in his fucking bed,” he whispered extremely quietly in my ear. I blushed and pushed him away from me before I involuntary pinned him down and fucked him right on the floor. I needed to never touch weed again, it did things to my once clean thoughts.   
“The fuck are you whispering about? That’s really rude yano!” Jesse questioned.   
“Just told him that Poppy is gonna be there,” Gerard shrugged “and I think she has a thing for soccer boys.”  
“Oioi!” The rest of his friends slapped their arms together, getting excited at the prospect they may have more gossip. I didn’t care about any girl though, all I cared was the way he was holding me. 

—-

“Who’s poppy?” I frowned once we were out of Ross’ house and back on the bridge. He stuffed our now joined hands into his hoodie pocket to almost  
protect them from the world.   
“A friend from a different school. She saw that picture I had of you on my Instagram and she said you were fit,” he shrugged.   
“When?”  
“Like a month ago, I dunno.”  
“Why didn’t you tell me?” I smirked.   
“Because I already told you, you’re mine. I already tried to set you up with a girl and it was fucking horrible to watch.”  
“How so?”  
“Oh come on! Don’t make me say it!”  
“Were you jealous?” I mocked.   
“Well, you did kiss the girl in my fucking kitchen!”  
“Excuse me, she kissed me!”  
“Now that’s what I wanted to hear,” he placed a kiss into the side of my hair as he proceeded to talk about the Saturday night plans. I zoned out a little whilst he discussed how I’d have to pretend to find this Poppy girl attractive for the simple fact it was the way I was going to be invited. I didn’t really want to go, but I wanted to hurt Joe. He also stated that the safest thing for us to do was to pretend I was going to like this girl, but then he would spin some lie about me getting back in touch with a girl from my past (that didn't exist) that no one else knew, as to not hurt her. It was fucking weird having plans for Halloween now because me and my friends weren’t party people. I had almost forgotten about the event and assumed us to just watch a shitty film or something and one of our houses whilst I pined after Gerard. I wasn’t backing down though, not now things were finally heating up between us. Despite the bridge walk home being scenically beautiful, the boating lake beneath us looking almost like liquidised sapphires, all I could appreciate was that mischievous glint in his eye. It was that same glint that made me fall even more deeply in love with him. 

He refused to let me go home, insisting I looked too high to get away with it, but I think maybe he just wanted me to spend the night with him.


	35. Snap out of it

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The next two chapters are short bcos theres so significant events happening soon hope that's okay :)

I spent the rest of the week in the utmost bliss anybody could ever imagine because he wanted me. He barely left my side, but I could not say that I minded. Sure, we had been close before, probably spending a little bit too much time together in the past, but never like this. I was finding it hard to drag myself away from him in the mornings, mostly being late for school with the way I explored him before class. There had been more than one occasion in the space of the 4 days that we’d both be running into the classroom, our pink cheeks and ruffled hair nearly giving us away. People probably began to notice too, because I was finding it excruciatingly difficult to keep my hands and eyes off him in public. It wasn’t always sexual, sometimes I just wanted to kiss him chastely, but still, it was still something best friends just shouldn’t do. On Thursday, I had been driven almost wild with jealousy when Amber came into the hall. Apparently, she had been spending a lot of time in the cosmetology department catching up on her practical work at lunch times, and I couldn’t exactly say I minded. It irked me the way she hung off his arm, but the way he winked at me from across the room reassured me it was just an act. I wasn’t happy about it, but I understood it. I was no more in favour of Joe finding out about us than he was, definitely not yet anyway. I was also still paranoid that this was just all a big fat joke, Gerard and his friends consorting together in a complex plan to humiliate me. There was just something about his eyes though, and the way they ravished me; I just trusted him. 

Trusting Gerard was probably one of the greatest mistakes anybody could ever make, but when he was crying out your name, it was hard not to. Since our relationship had changed, I had not confessed my love for him. He knew I loved him, I’d told him many times, I just hadn’t quite admitted that I was _IN_ love with him. I felt weird saying the words out loud now that the context was ambiguous. It wasn’t that I felt them any less, fuck, I felt them more than ever. It was just hard to let him see me so vulnerable, and I couldn’t quite bear it if he stopped saying them back.  The fact I was bottling up my emotions meant they were seeping out at the seams, and my friends had begun to notice. James had grown colder towards me but I couldn’t blame him. I’d promised him some alone time with just the two of us, but I was finding it difficult to drag myself away from Gerard at any free moment I had. I felt fucking guilty, obviously, he meant a lot to me, but Gerard's kiss was quick to drag my mind away from my friend's neglected eyes. 

“So, me and my mom are going pumpkin picking on Saturday after football, do you guys want me to pick you one up?” Kenny asked on Friday lunch, innocently chewing on a strawberry lace staining his teeth a sickly red colour. The fuck head had a date tonight, yet he seemed more excited about pumpkin picking with his mother.   
“Nah, you’re alright Ken,” Nathan sniggered, not hiding the fact he was amused despite Kenny not joking.   
“Why? It’s Halloween Nath!”  
“Halloween sucks,” he rolled his eyes.   
“You can’t stay inside on Halloween!” Kenny gasped. He wasn’t used to Nathan’s lack of participation because for the past four Halloween’s, Kenny had dragged all of us on some sort of activity. Not pumpkin picking though, that was always shared between himself and his mother. He always insisted we had to dress up no matter how much we protested, picking a theme every single year for us to follow. I was just thankful the day was on a Sunday this year, it meant he wouldn’t drag us around the neighbour trick or treating like he had when it had fell on a Friday or Saturday. By trick or treating, me and James stood at the back in our half-arsed, undead Alex Turner costumes whilst Kenny marched to people’s doors dressed as Nicki fucking Minaj. 

 _~~~ last year ~~~_  
 _“The theme was zombie musicians! You can’t both be Alex Turner!” Kenny yelled getting upset at the fact me and James had both turned up in leather jackets and our hair slicked back. It was enough to pass as a musician, and the cheap fake blood smeared on our faces was enough to satisfy the undead element of Kenny’s Halloween theme. I still looked normal enough though that if Gerard and his friends happened to see us (not like they would be trick or fucking treating at the age of 16), then I would not be made a fool of. Kenny didn’t care though. Kenny didn’t give a fuck enough to the point he’d turned up in a 24-inch blonde weave and socks stuffed down a bra and his underwear_  t _o create some lumpy ass looking curves. He had also taken the dead theme to an extreme, spending way too much time replicating some gore YouTube tutorial._  
 _“Fuck me, I think we’re in trouble with Nicki,” James smirked once Kenny had stormed off to evaluate Matt and Harry’s costumes that were even worse than ours. Matt had stuck on a fake moustache and claimed he was Freddie Mercury, but Kenny had gotten upset saying it was insensitive because the guy was actually dead and Harry had come in a t-shirt and jeans saying he was Ed Sheeran, but I think he just didn’t want to change his clothes from earlier._  
 _“Well, when has Alex Turner ever given a fuck about Nicki Minaj anyway Jam?” I giggled earning a furious dagger look from Kenny in the process._  
 _~~~~_

 “Come on guys!” Kenny clapped his hands together. “Mom said you guys could stay over tomorrow night!”  
“I can’t,” Nathan said quickly, shooting me a look. We had briefly discussed how we were going to confess to the others together because it would not be worth the consequences if they found out on their own. I knew it was not going to be pretty, but it was better than them seeing with a social media slip up.   
“Why?” Kenny frowned, “I already bought the Tim Burton top hits!”  
“Because, erh, I’m at a party.”  
“Party? What party?” Matts ears pricked up. Matt was definitely more of a party boy than a corpse bride kind of dude, which made me feel worse because I was the opposite. I’d thought about it though, and although I didn’t want to watch Gerard like a hawk, after the last party I did not trust him. He needed me, right?   
“Erm, Frank?” Nathan looked at me, dropping me right in the shit. James looked up from where he was picking at his sandwich, which made me shoot my eyes down to my open homework diary instead, as if it was the bible and I was a preacher.   
“So, I’m going to a party with Ger-“ I began awkwardly, but was quickly met with the protests I was expecting.   
“You’re going to a party, and you invited Nathan and not me?” Matt spat at me like venom.   
“You’re going to a party, instead of watching our annual Tim Burton marathon?” Kenny added, sounding just as hurt.   
“Look, it’s not like-“  
“There are fit girls at those parties, Frank. Girls that are wasted on you, you fucking dick loving weirdo!” Matt said.   
“Matt!” Harry slapped his arm.   
“What? He said I’m allowed the gay jokes if he’s allowed the desperate ones at me, didn’t you Frank? Plus, it’s not a lie, what’s he gonna do with a pair of tits-“  
“Matt, shut up!” I hissed, looking around the hall anxiously even though Gerard’s friends were far away from us. I didn’t mind Matt’s humour, in fact, I mostly found it funny. My friends and I weren’t the kind of group to kiss the ground we all walked upon, no, we liked to laugh at ourselves. We just had to be careful about Kenny, he was a little more sensitive than the rest of us, bless him.   
“But it’s true!” He said again, “why is Nathan going? No, that is so selfish, Frank! Your second best friend is a little virgin boy and you’re too selfish to get him laid!”  
“What?” I frowned.   
“James is a virgin!” Matt said a little too loudly, making the girls on the next table snigger a little and James blush.   
“Leave me out of this, I don’t want to go to a drug-fuelled brothel, thank you very much,” he snapped, carelessly tossing his uneaten food towards the middle of the table.   
“Erm, that sounds like a sick party!” Matt said.   
“You don’t do drugs, Matt,” Harry frowned, his monotonous voice making his statement dry.   
“Yeah, But I do sex with girls not like fucking Ru Paul over here!” He crudely pointed in my direction.   
“Ru Paul is a drag queen, I’m not into drag!” I protested, shuddering at the thought of myself in anything but my boring wardrobe.   
“Fine, Elton John then!”  
“Now you’re just naming gay people!” I whined.   
“Whatever, Franks you’re missing the point! The point is you snaked us all out to go to a party with Nathan!”  
“Why am I getting the blame for this?” I furrowed my brow, “Nathan’s the one who’s brother is seeing Joe Delo’s sister!”   
Ha. Two could play the game of dropping the other in it.   
“What?” Harry, Matt and Kenny asked in unison, much to Nathan’s displeasure.   
“Look I was gonna tell you-“ he begun.   
“Elliott is seeing Joe’s peng sister? How the fuck has your oaf of a brother pulled that?” Matt spat in utter bewilderment. I think we were all thinking it though. Joe’s sister was a few years older than us, but everyone knew her for her large assets and pretty face, much to his annoyance. Gerard had spent a lot of time banging on about how attractive he found Joe’s sister before things between us changed. I think at one point, despite her being three years older than us, she had come on to him once but he’d declined saying it was too much like fucking Joe because they had the same eyes and their clothes smelt of the same washing powder. Nathan’s brother was not like Gerard though, I mean he wasn’t even like Nathan. He developed video games in the city or something and was a far cry away from the muscled meatheads she usually went for. Nathan didn’t leave us waiting for long though, he just rubbed his fingers together to insinuate money and we all understood. Joe’s sister's lip fillers and hair extensions can’t have been cheap and I guessed Elliot’s sizeable income was enough to satisfy her.   
“Anyway, our mom's said we had to get on,” Nathan rolled his eyes.   
“Since when has Delo listened to his mom?” Kenny frowned.   
“Since he also found out that Elliott has a sick, cheap plug.”  
“Plug?” Kenny frowned, “like a phone charger?”  
“Drug dealer, you fucking sped!” Matt laughed at Kenny’s naivety making him blush.   
“I thought they used Dean?” I questioned knowing he would not be happy at Joe for getting drugs from anybody else.   
“Yeah he does, he’s not an idiot he ain’t gonna cross, Dean. He just realised if I got the drugs, then Deano couldn’t be pissed about it, could he?”  
“How often have you been having secret play dates with Joe?” Harry laughed.   
“Just once! But he’s not _THAT_ bad.”  
I scoffed but kept quiet because I needed Nathan tomorrow night.   
“He was pretty sound, yano?” Nathan shrugged “we just smoked some pot.”  
“Who even are you?” Kenny scowled like a toddler having a tantrum.   
“Oh come on Kenny boy, you know you’re my number one still. Plus, I promise on Sunday we’ll watch all the Tim Burton you want!”  
“Even The Nightmare Before Christmas, even though you said it was the most overrated film of all time?”  
“Even that piece of cinematic shite, Ken,” Nathan laughed ruffling Kenny’s fiery locks.

—-

“James!” I ran after my friend once the bell had signalled the end of class. I’d ran out of music extremely quickly to wait for him outside of his French lesson like a fucking creeper. He’d obviously seen me and had been trying to sneak past me, but I wasn’t going to let him get away that easily. “You alright, bro?”  
“Fucking fine and dandy,” he said dryly, almost like he was hiding something.   
“I know it’s sly, but I was gonna ask if you wanted to come to that party with me. I just didn’t want to ask Kenny because-“  
“Because Gerard told you Kenny would embarrass you?” He snapped.   
“No! I didn’t mean-“  
“Then why was it some big secret?”   
“Because I knew you’d act all fucking jealous like this!” I snapped at him without truly meaning it. I loved James, I really fucking did, but he had to understand that I had waited so long for Gerard that I couldn’t just give it up. Maybe he didn’t understand because he’d never really liked anybody, but that wasn’t my fault. He was making me feel guilty for even considering a party, even though I had spent the past 5 Halloween’s with just him, despite it being Gerard’s favourite holiday. The first year I told him James was joining our movie marathon, he’d faked being ill and spent the night by himself and then the next year Joe had stolen him away from us. I knew he’d faked it that night because his mom had let it slip to my mom, but maybe if I’d forced him to come, none of this mess would have happened. After that year, Gerard didn’t love Halloween so much.   
“Oh, Frank, you think I’m jealous of him?” He snarled.   
“Well, you always fucking act like it!”  
“No, he’s just a cunt. It’s not my fault you’re being manipulated into being his bitch. You do realise he’s still seeing Amber, right? You must know by now you’re just an easy fuck to him.” His pace increased, and I struggled to keep up with him without running.   
“He’s only still with her so Joe doesn’t get suspicious.”  
“Ah, did he tell you that?” He said in a patronising tone.   
“Yeah, But so did his friends.”  
“Look, Frank, I just don’t wanna see you get hurt and I know that’s what’s inevitably going to happen!”  
“But if I get hurt, then at least I can say I fucking tried! I’d rather be heartbroken and have given it my all instead of some pathetic virgin who has to wonder what the fuck this meant!”  
“Pathetic virgin, like me?” He furrowed his brow.   
“No!” I protested, “Look, come with me to that party and maybe there will be a girl there that-“  
“No, Frank. I’m going to Kenny’s, he’s really upset about this.”   
“Then... come over! Come over tonight and we’ll order some food and just chill, yeah?”  
“Aren’t you seeing Gerard tonight?”  
“I was, but I’ll just tell him to come over late instead. He’ll probably be grateful for the fact that he can see his friends again, I think they’re getting a bit confused as to why he’s always with me.”  
“I’m not your second choice-“  
“James, it’s Friday, you know I always see G on Fridays. I’m choosing to see you though, so shut up!”  
“You just feel guilty,” he smirked, his expression softening.   
“Yeah, but you’re still my favourite boy,” he nudged him.   
“I fuckin’ wish,” he nudged me back. 

—-

Needless to say, Gerard did not take it well. He was waiting impatiently for me in the school carpark, furious rap music pouring out of his Audi.   
“Wait here!” I said to James, knowing full well If I brought him over too, I may as well have poured petrol on a fire, it would have had the same effect.   
“Get in, loser,” Gerard said, winding down his window and wondering why I was going to the driver's side instead of my usual seat. I always had a thing for him in his shirt and tie from our uniform, especially when he sprinted out of class to put that stupid fucking cap back on. I think I stared at him a little too long with an open mouth, really considering if it would be that bad if I cancelled on James.   
No. I had to drag myself away for my own sanity more than anything.   
“Don’t be pissed,” I said changing my mind and deciding to actually get in the car so he could not drive away without me explaining.   
“What?” He said, his whole demeanour changing as he eyed up James from the gravelled path.   
“So, James is coming over just for a bit but-“  
“Are you fucking joking me?”  
“No, because I’m spending tomorrow with-“  
“Get out then.” He snapped, scrambling in his pocket to find one of those ghastly cigarettes.   
“You can come around later!”  
“Nah, you’re not flirting with that dick head all night and then calling me when you need to fuck something!”  
“We do not flirt, he’s straight!” I blushed profusely.   
“Believe what you wanna,  but don’t mug me off in the process.”  
“Gerard!” I fumed, “you have an actual girlfriend! I just wanna see my friend-“  
“I don’t see her anymore though. Plus, we had plans, Frank! I was going to take you to the cinema to see that stupid fucking rerun of monster house you were banging on about, but forget it.”  
“You...” I almost visibly swooned at him. Gerard was more into gorefests, claiming the gross blood and stuff shut his brain up just for a little bit. I wasn’t as bad as Kenny, but I was more into lighthearted Halloween fluff and the local movie theatre were showing a rerun of my old favourite film which I’d banged on about none stop to Gerard. “you were gonna take me?”  
“Yeah,” he lit up the cigarette and inhaled more deeply than usual.   
“Well that’s not until 9, why can’t we still go?”  
“Because you wanna see James!”  
“For like an hour or two! He’s just going through some shit at the minute, and I’ve been a shit friend!”  
“You’re too nice to your friends for your own good, Frankie.” He rolled his eyes not knowing the truth to his statement. If I wasn’t so nice, maybe I wouldn’t have been doing everything to keep Gerard in my life.   
“Look, I’ll tell James you already bought tickets so I have to go at like 8, okay?”  
“Fine,” He said, although the tone of his response suggested him being anything but fine. 

—  
“Stop looking at your phone!” James whined. He had a right to be annoyed, I was trying weirdly hard to message Gerard because he’d been a little bit off with me. He said he was still coming, but his replies were sporadic and rushed. Despite that and my worries, I had a nice time with James. Once he’d relaxed, we were laughing back and forth between each other again on my bed.   
“Shit, I need to get changed!” I said shooting to my feet and beginning to unbutton my shirt. “What?” I frowned at James who was just blinking up at me from the bed.   
“Erm,” he blushed, looking at my bare chest. “I just- Erm did it not hurt?”  
“Oh,” I half smirked, half blushed as I looked down at my torso. It was littered with love bites caused by my best friend because sometimes we just got a little carried away. “No.”  
“They look tacky, man, why do you let him do that?”  
“Because, it’s kinda hot, I dunno. I stopped him on my neck though, I ran out of excuses to tell my mom like 3 days ago...”  
“Did you?” He frowned, motioning to the tiny purple and yellow mark below my ear. I smiled to myself touching the sensitive spot. There, he could do whatever he fucking wanted.   
“I can’t explain it. I thought it was stupid too, but when you’re that turned on you’re not exactly thinking ‘ _oh what am I gonna tell my mom_?’ Are you?”  
“Okay, But I think it’s creepy. He’s like branding you.”  
“You find it creepy because you don’t like him,” I replied snidely.   
“Nah, I just don’t get his deal but don’t talk about him.”  
“Fine,” I shrugged, not particularly wanting him to rain on my parade either. “Just stop looking at me, you’re making me paranoid!”  
“Sorry,” he blushed, “I was just looking at your... form.”  
“Huh? My forms gone to shit since we stopped playing soccer!” I self consciously grabbed my t-shirt and threw it on.   
“No,” he shook his head “You’re lucky Franks, you can eat like a fucking horse and still look the way you do.”  
“No! Stop!” I cringed, again, hating compliments.   
“He doesn’t tell you enough.”  
“Gerard?”  
“Yeah, he doesn’t remind you enough that you’re... I dunno.”  
“He does! He tells me every fucking day. I just don’t believe him.”  
“Why?” He got to his feet, walking towards me.   
“Because, I dunno, I’m ugly maybe?”  
“Don’t fucking make me laugh,” he glared at me. “You know you’re fucking beautiful, right?”  
“No!”   
“I think you’re beautiful,” he muttered, looking to the floor but still moving closer.   
“Erm, thanks James,” I replied awkwardly, not really knowing how to accept the compliment. I hated people being nice to me, especially when I was used to James’ blunt, borderline offensive, sense of humour.   
“Sorry, I’m being weird again.”  
“No!” I said quickly, forcing him to meet my eyes. The distance between us was a little too close for comfort, but I think he just needed to be reassured my relationship with Gerard did not affect my friendship with him. He was still my second closest friend, and I would still love him till the day I died.   
“I’m so fucking frustrated, Frank,” he confessed, gingerly reaching out and touching my arm, almost crying out for some physical affection. I’d tasted loneliness before and I hadn’t realised just how bitter it was until I’d compared it to how sweet being loved was. James needed to be loved, he just didn’t know how. I wish I knew more girls, I needed him to understand the fucking euphoria of being held by the person who mattered most.   
“I know.”  
“No, you don’t.”  
“I do! I wanted to kiss him for like, years, man! I do get it!”  
“I just-“   
“ _You could save me from the way I tend to be_ ,” my phone blared out, that ringtone interrupting us for the second time.   
“Have a nice night, Franks. I hope he’s everything you’ve ever wanted,” James forced a smile, retracted his arm, and gathered his stuff to leave.   
“I will! Look, if you wanna come tomorrow come, but if not I’ll see you on Sunday still, yeah?”  
“Yeah, well I’ll see you at football tomorrow, won’t I?”  
“You sure will! I wouldn’t miss Kenny’s excitement for his annual pumpkin picking for the world, Jam!”  
“Sweet, well, bye Frank,” he hovered at the door a little.   
“Bye, James! Can you tell Gerard I’ll be out in a second, please? I’ve just got to change my jeans!”  
“Erm, no, I’m not talking to Gerard,” he laughed.   
“Fuck head!” I called after him and answered my phone. 

 

 


	36. Too intoxicated to be scared

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Thank you Sleepwalking for recommending a song for this chapter (Billie Eilish makes me emo haha)
> 
> Just because I found it funny;
> 
> I have a puppy called Gerard (he's named after Gerard Way and Steven Gerrard creating the most stupid dog name hahahah) and I just heard my mum shout from downstairs "Gerard, stop having sex with things" and I just thought it was a big FAT mood for this chapter hahahahah
> 
> Finally, monster house is the best halloween film, change my mind

G POV-

 

“But babe, I don’t understand why you’re seeing him again!” Amber said as I gathered my stuff to leave her. She was right, I was probably an idiot for leaving the naked girl in her bed who’d offered a second round of sex to me if I’d just stayed the night. Then again, if those people who called me an idiot understood the thrill I got from the danger, I think they would have left too. Being with Frank always felt different for the simple fact, I fucking felt something. For those few hours I was with him, I felt more than a rotting corpse, and just a little bit more like a functioning human being. It was reckless, but that only made it more exciting for me. I wasn’t gay though, I couldn’t be. I think I needed Amber to prove that to me, even though her body was becoming less thrilling by the fucking day. Fuck, I don’t think those girls had ever been anything to me, it’s just something Joe told me to do. The way her acrylic nails snaked across my torso trying to rip my t-shirt from me made my skin crawl. I didn’t want her to touch me, I just wanted her to stop the thoughts of him that were becoming too loud to ignore. 

I’d repressed my emotions for him for so long that now, I couldn’t bear it. I’d felt weird around him for as long as I could remember, but now it was worse than ever. I hated myself for needing him, but I figured as long as he was happy, there was no harm in fucking about for a bit. Loving him was out of the question, it just wouldn’t work. Fucking him though? That was doable. To make myself less confused about the whole thing, I believed I was just helping him out. Despite the offers, I don’t think he had ever felt comfortable to fuck anybody else before, so I guessed I was just doing him a favour. Most seventeen-year-old boys wanted to have sex, right? It didn’t matter who it was with. I just had to use Amber to block out the maladaptive cognitions that plagued me that questioned why I wasn’t so quick to let him go once the sex was over. Kissing had always seemed futile to me, something you did to lead to sex, so why was I so content to just sit there explore his whole mouth all night? Fuck, I needed the coke Joe had offered to me tomorrow night more than ever. The thrill of bringing Frank into my double life tomorrow was enough to set me on edge, so I needed the drugs to calm me down. I was sadistic, I knew that much. Nothing good could come of this, but I was too fucked up to care.

Seeing James stroll down his path rubbed me in the wrong way. I could not describe the fire in my stomach, but it was that same feeling I felt whenever I did stupid impulsive things. The heat inside my body was becoming unbearable, and the only thing to expel it was to taunt him. Frank may have been insecure enough to believe people did not like him, but I was too aware of the fact. I saw the way James stared at him, the way he vibrated in anger when I lingered my hand a little too long on the small of Frank’s back and the way he was quick to exit when I held him in a way that he never had the balls to do. I knew the fucker had been in love with him from the day he’d taken him away from me. I was not going to lie down and take it though, because I think that would have killed me. I couldn’t have Frank, but that didn’t mean James could either. He didn’t know him like I did, and he never fucking would. Friends that fuck always got messy like this, especially when I was too addicted to him to stop. I tried to ignore the way I craved him, and not just sexually, because it fucking scared the shit out of me.

I wound down my window, thinking of anything to peacock myself, but just ended up glaring at him.

“He’s coming,” James glared at me.

“Yeah, I know,” I glared back just as harshly back. Frank had answered the call in a rushed tone claiming he’d be two minutes and I had to try and still my racing thoughts on why he had sounded so flustered. I knew James though, and he didn’t have the fucking balls to act on his feelings. “Just fucking making sure you know your place.”

“Don’t pretend you care about him, Gerard!” 

Oh, if only he knew how I cared about him too fucking much. I cared about him so deeply, it kept me awake at night driving myself crazy wondering what his lips would feel like. They were sweeter than I could have imagined, and James would never fucking know that.

“Jealousy is such a bitch, ain’t it?” I sneered. James and I had never gotten on, but in the past year, we had become spiteful towards each other as our affections for Frank grew stronger. Before I would avoid him but I was finding it harder to ignore the way he looked at him. 

“Is that why you’re still fucking Amber, to make him jealous?”

“Nah, I fuck them both because I can,” I shrugged playing up to the power. For the most part, I shut myself off in my head and let my vile words and actions take control. It was a way of coping with the guilt because being nice to people got me fucking nowhere in life. I may not have been happy, but at least people respected me now. 

“Give me one good reason not to tell him everything,” James threatened. 

“Because, he won’t believe you and plus, why would he give a fuck?”

“Erm, because he really fucking likes you maybe? Don’t tell me you’re that fucking stupid!”

“No,” I said quickly. He didn’t like me, I think he just liked the way I touched him. 

“Whatever,” he shook me off knowing I had won. I was a serpent, and he would believe every single lie my twisted tongue told. 

James was quick to walk off, leaving me seething with anger that instantly melted away when I saw the familiar pair of warm eyes blinking at me from the path. I tried to ignore the way that his smile made my heart sink, knowing it was unattainable to me. That stupid fucking nose ring and those typical white boy clothes looked better on him than anybody. He looked hot before, but there was just something about his newfound defiance that drove me crazy, in such a way that a best friend should never feel. 

“Hey baby,” I said, trying to sound as relaxed as possible as he climbed into the passenger side of my car. He grinned and leant over and kissed me softly, making me drag him back into more. Ambers kiss had left me so cold, I just craved him to warm me back up. I called him baby knowing he craved the endearment like I craved his touch.

“What was that for?” He pulled back once I’d finally let him go, his lips wet and inviting.

“Missed you,” I brought his hand up to my lips and kissed his knuckles.

“I missed you too! What have you been doing?”

“Drawing,” I lied quickly, knowing it would please him. It wasn’t a lie, I mean I had been drawing, Amber had just called in the middle of it all. He was with James anyway, so why should I have felt bad? 

“I..” He began but did not finish, instead, he just looked at me.

“What?”

“Just you. You’re just... I don’t know,” he shuffled sideways in his seat, making me want to just stop driving and smother him in kisses instead.

“Is that a good thing?” I laughed nervously.

“You know that it is, now stop turning me into a cringe ball and let me put my Halloween music on!”

With that, and his poorly executed air drums and singing, I felt the ice in my soul begin to melt away again.

\---

Monster House wasn’t my type of film, but the way his eyes lit up in the same way they had the first time we’d watched it all those years ago was enough to make me glad I’d brought him here. Still, not even his favourite Halloween film could keep him away from me and I soon felt him backup into me, flicking the armrest up to move closer. It made me almost giddy with how nervous I knew he was to initiate things. He just kept looking up at me, biting his lip never quite daring to make a move. I knew what he wanted, I just enjoyed seeing him squirm with want for a bit. It soon got too much though, especially when I turned my face and nuzzled my nose against his own and I couldn’t quite resist closing the distance between us. 

When the film had ended, we shot apart once the lights had come back on. He had practically been crawling into my lap, his tongue moving quickly against my own when the credits had started rolling. I felt him audibly moan in frustration right up until I grabbed his hand and started to drag him home. Except, we didn’t quite make it home before I had to pull over in a dark car park.


	37. No-one knows the pain, no-one sees what I see in you

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Told u it was gonna be a long one
> 
> His birthday isn't Halloween btw just bcos it didn't fit with the stories timeline
> 
> Also, if MCR is your thing you're probably not gonna be into the song for this chapter but I'm putting it here anyway so I remember (it's the song mentioned in the chapter if you want pragmatics but honestly it's not important but I think it was still a significant lyric but still a song Joe would have playing at his party lol)  
> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QVnIeUZYIz8

F POV-

I usually could not wait to get back to soccer after our breaks, but dragging myself out of Gerard’s warm bed was like pulling teeth. He groaned at the sound of my alarm at 6:30, forcing him out of a slumber he would not usually have risen from for a good few hours. Early mornings and Gerard Way did not go hand in hand, and it was almost humorous how grumpy he truly was.   
“ _Shhh_ ,” I leant over and kissed his lips, the memory of them all over my body last night in the car still hot on my mind and making me fizz with excitement. We had been driving, perhaps I had been stroking his leg a little too suggestively, but he had just taken a sharp left into a secluded car park because he told me had to have me at that moment.   
I knew he was awake, but he still forced his eyes closed, scrunching them at the intrusive commotion I was making. I pecked at his warm lips until he began to nuzzle at my nose.   
“Hate you,” he grumbled.   
“Well, go back to sleep and I’ll see you after practice.”  
“M’kay,” he muttered, “or you could just stay in bed with me.”  
He began pulling at my pyjama shirt, my tired eyes nearly giving in to him. No, I said to myself, this was the last tournament for three whole years whilst we went to university, I couldn’t let Grimshaw down like that. Gerard was warm and inviting, and the cold football pitch had never seemed so unappealing, but it had to be done.   
“I fuckin’ wish,” I placed a messy kiss on his lips again, “But alas,” I sighed heavily, hauling myself to my sorry feet.   
“Fucker!” He cursed but snuggled back into his bed anyway. 

By the time I had got my kit on, I expected him to be passed out. He wasn’t though, he was sat up in bed wearing that camel coloured wiry wool cardigan his mother had begged him to throw out, because of how worn it was. It was secretly my favourite, but I hadn’t seen him wear it in a very long time.   
“What?” He frowned, pulling the overly long sleeves over his hands self consciously.   
“Seeing you awake before lunchtime on a Saturday is a little alarming,” I smirked. “Why are you up?”  
“Giving you a lift, getting a Starbucks,” he shrugged getting to his feet.   
“I can walk! Get back into bed!” I protested but not too harshly as he wrapped his arms around my waist.   
“No, some dick head has already woken me up now. Plus, that soccer kit does things to me,” he laughed.   
“What things?”   
“Oh baby, you don’t wanna know,” he chuckled further, pulling me out his room by lacing our hands together. 

“Okay, well I’m going to get a fuck off massive coffee but I’ll pick you up at lunchtime, yeah?” He said pulling up neatly at the parks car park.   
“Okay, G,” I said going to get out of his car.   
“ _Buh, buh, buh_!” He protested tapping his cheek.   
“But I thought you weren’t into PDAs in the daytime?” I smirked leaning over to give him the peck he had requested.   
“Well, I told you that soccer kit does things to me.” He shrugged catching my lips between his own. 

“Frank! Was that Gerard?” Grimshaw frowned as his expensive car sped off down the road.   
“Erh yeah,” I replied awkwardly hoping he hadn’t seen us inside the car, despite knowing it would have been impossible.   
“Well, I hope he wasn’t driving you drunk!”  
“No! We went to the movies last night and he was just awake so said he’d drop me off!”  
“Okay, fine. I do however have some brilliant news for you!”  
“What?” I asked eagerly, bending over to change my shoes.   
“So you know about this training camp scholarship thing?” He smiled, toying with me.   
“What?” I shot up, my heart grinding to a halt.   
“So at the last game, I didn’t tell you because I didn’t want you to feel the pressure but I invited that group of scouts-“  
“Yeah, I know you did!” I rolled my eyes.   
“No! You thought I invited the ones from around here, but I have contacts from all over, Frank. Contacts that are dying to give you that sports scholarship!”  
“Huh?” I said in utter disbelief.   
“You’re good, Franks! You’re really friggen good! They want you to sign up with them!”  
“Huh?” I said again, completely flabbergasted.   
“They want you to do a sports science degree at their campus with the agreement you’ll play for their university team! The opportunity is amazing! You won’t have to pay for the course for the year that you’re there, you’ll get a bursary and just think of how it will look on your CV!”  
“What university?” Was all that I could ask.   
“The University of Milan-“  
“Fucking Milan?” I spat out feeling my heart sink.   
“Watch your language! And yes, Frank, Milan!”  
“No!” I shook my head, “I can’t go to Milan!”  
“Why not? It’s just for a year and you have family out there, don’t you? Your mom's mom-“  
“Yeah, they live in Amalfi though! That’s ages away from Milan!”  
“And? You’re eighteen next month, you can do this!”  
“I-“   
“Everything’s going to be paid for, Frank! You would be an idiot to not take this opportunity! I know you’re worried your mom's gonna miss you but she’d understand!”  
Yes, I cared about my mom but she wasn’t the reason I was less than excited about the offer. Obviously, I was grateful, but I had only just gotten my head around the thought of leaving this city for a bit, let alone the country. The truth was that I fucking hated change. I didn’t know how I’d cope in a foreign land without Kenny’s stupid smile, James’ reassurance or even Matts sarcastic insults! Fuck, leaving Gerard behind was out of the question. The thought of being away from him sent such horror through my spine, I dreaded to even entertain the idea.   
“Look, I think you’re just shocked because you weren’t expecting it. You’re not kind enough to yourself, Frank! I’ll leave it to settle in, but honestly, don’t let anybody snatch this opportunity from you!”

Grimshaw’s words rang in my head, but I couldn’t tell anybody. I knew that the others wouldn’t understand, they’d call me an idiot for passing up an opportunity like that but my separation anxiety said differently. I had become so accustomed to my routine, the thought of it not being there anymore sent fear straight to my bones. I felt sick right up until I heard an obnoxiously loud exhaust pull up and a familiar mop of black hair stroll over holding two cups of overpriced coffee.   
“Gerard!” Kenny waved eagerly.   
“Hey, Ken!” He grinned, “how was the hot date last night?”  
“So good! She’s got a spare ticket to the Demi Lovato concert next weekend and she asked me to go!” He grinned giddily. I loved Kenny, but he had not stopped banging on about his date for ages now, even taking the time to tell us how many times she had smiled at him. It was cute, but fuck me, he was worse than me for being cringey.   
“Awesome!” Gerard laughed, “Maisie’s a nice girl, I hope you don’t hurt her you little jezzy.”  
“No!” Kenny said proudly.   
“Thatta boy, now where’s my boy?” He glanced passed Kenny and met my eyes. It was half time so luckily Grimshaw wasn’t there to lecture me on how drinking coffee was bad for my body.   
“Hey baby,” He said confidentially striding over and placing a wet kiss on my lips.   
“Gerard!” I batted him away looking around self consciously. Apart from Matt pulling a disgusted face, no one had even batted an eyelid or even noticed.   
“What? Kenny doesn’t care if I kiss you, do you Ken?”  
“No! But speaking about that I need to ask your advice on kissing-“  
“Yeah course, I’ll just be a second, man,” he chuckled dragging me off to the benches at the side.   
“Are you not cold?” I frowned watching his teeth chatter as he clutched the coffee cup.   
“Yup,” he agreed pulling his cardigan sleeves even tighter over his hands.   
“Then go home! We still have an hour left!”  
“Nah, I wanna see you!”  
“You’re so fucking frustratingly stubborn!” I fumed but smiled as he nestled his head on my shoulder.   
“You love it, baby,” he laughed.   
“Yeah, I do,” I sneakily placed a kiss in his hair. 

“Frank! Can you come help Will’s footwork?” Grimshaw called over to me from where he was stood with one of the younger kids. Will was some little brat who had way too much energy for his own good, and it showed with his rushed, sloppy footwork. I didn’t want to help him, I wanted to stay with Gerard, but I don’t think I could tell Grimshaw as to why.   
“Fucks sake,” I hauled myself to my feet.   
“It’s cool, I’ve gotta give Kenny the birds and the bees talk anyway,” he smirked jumping to his own feet.   
“Hey!” I protested, “we know how that fucking goes!”  
“What do you mean?”   
“Well, let's just say don’t go giving Kenny any kissing lessons okay?” I smirked back at him.   
“As much as I wanted to do that, I guess redheads aren’t my type, I think I prefer short little former emos,” he winked at me before slinking off to where Kenny was eagerly waiting for him. 

I must say, I think I put a fuck tonne more effort into practice when I had Gerard’s gaze directly focused on me. 

—

“Come here,” Gerard sighed smearing cheap fake blood on my forehead and letting it dribble down my cheeks. He’d made it clear that guys did not make an effort, and if you had anything more than fake blood on you’d be an outcast. I was thankful anyway, I had spent too much time with him in bed that afternoon to even remotely plan a costume. No, instead we were both wearing white t-shirts, black jeans and that almost insulting synthetic liquid on our faces.   
“You ready?” He asked as we climbed out of the taxi in front of Joe’s house. It was just as decrepit as I remembered, except this time I wasn’t alone. Obviously, I was nervous, I didn’t want to be here anymore than Joe wanted me here, but I still had to try. If he could sit there in the cold, abysmal weather watching me play a sport he hated, then I could do this for him.   
“Nope, But you’re gonna make me go in anyway, aren’t you?”  
“You bet ya, I need my boy by my side!” He threw a careless arm around my shoulder, not even retracting it as we approached the front door. 

Gerard did not knock, he was obviously well accustomed to entering Joe’s parties, but he still seemed nervous. 

—-

The room was exactly how I remembered it, smoky with something other than cigarettes and full of teenagers. I had suddenly understood what he meant when he’d said boys didn’t dress up but the girls did, or should I say they didn’t really wear much at all. Two things that did mix were very intoxicated girls and skimpy outfits and it left me feeling uncomfortable. Boys we’re circling them like vultures, and it was only 9 o clock.   
“You okay?” Gerard asked, “I think Nathan is here, should we go and find him?”  
“Yeah sounds good,” I confirmed, suddenly feeling an intense apprehensiveness take over my body. I wanted nothing more than to be snuggled on Kenny’s sofa watching those stupid animated films, but I’d made my bed, and I was going to lie in it if it killed me.   
“Babe!” That shrill voice I had been avoiding came from behind us. Gerard quickly took his arm from around me and instead half hugged his girlfriend. Obviously, it was hard to compare us, but I still felt intimidated by her. She was dressed as a fucking playboy bunny, in nothing more than actual black Lacey underwear, stockings and rabbit ears. I saw Gerard’s eyes instinctively looked down at her body, before regaining himself and quickly snapping them away. She leant in to kiss him but missed his lips slightly as he moved his head, leaving a smudged pink lipstick mark on the corner of his mouth.   
“Babe,” she repeated again in a whiney voice, “What the fuck?”  
“Just had a smoke didn’t I? You said you didn't like the taste of it,” He said quickly, “let me get a drink and then I’ll greet you properly, yeah?”  
“Okay!” She grinned, reaching up and hugging him completely excluding me from the circle. I didn’t really give a fuck, she’d been mardy with me ever since the Hannah incident. She could give me those daggers all she wanted, her boyfriend had still kissed me. I’d said before that she wasn’t necessarily evil, but she was far from kind. I’d seen the way she barged around school making people uncomfortable and I’d noticed more than ever how she picked on the table of quieter girls. I tried to ignore the way he had his strong hands around her bare waist though, it just made me think of how she’d had him in the past.   
“I gotta find Nathan,” he said awkwardly pulling back from her.   
“He’s in the kitchen, but he’s with Delo,” she glared at me, looking me up and down. “Hannah’s there too.”   
“Well, let’s fucking all go then,” Gerard said lacing his arm with Amber’s leaving me trailing after them both awkwardly. I wished I’d stayed with my friends, I bet they were having more fun than I was. I thought about leaving, but it was just the way that Amber was eyeing up Gerard like he was a fucking prime fillet steak or something that kept my feet plodding along after them. I felt incredibly desensitised as I walked into the kitchen, my body was there but my mind was far away, somewhere where I felt safe.   
“G man!” A booming voice came from the bohemian kitchen table as I saw the tall figure get to their feet.  
“Delo, how you been my man?” Gerard said doing that weird handshake thing they always did. I hadn’t seen Joe all week because he’d been ill, and I must say it was the most peaceful time of my fucking life. Joe had become almost like a bad dream to me, but it appeared here I was back asleep. His costume was even worse than mine and Gerard’s, with just a stupid fake dagger going through his head, that I wished was a little more real than cheap plastic. For someone with no sense of humour, he looked fucking ridiculous and I had to stifle my laughter.   
“Oh, _he_ came in the end,” Joe said glaring down at me.  
“Leave my main man Frankie alone, Delo,” Tom said coming over, obviously fucked out of his God damn mind. I wasn’t sure when me and Gerard’s friends had become friendly, but if it pissed Joe off, I was here for it.  
“Yeah, me and Tom got some more bud, you want in?” Jesse asked, putting his muscly arm around my shoulder. The two things that drove Gerard crazy was me dabbling in narcotics and other people touching me, and Jesse had just provided me with the perfect jealousy weapon.   
“If you guys wanna fuck about with faggots that’s fine,” Joe replied snidely turning away, “but when he tries to fuck you don’t come crying to me!”  
Fuck me, Joe created such a toxic environment, I felt like I was in some sort of dystopian society. No wonder Gerard was petrified to show any sign of his real personality, Joe would have destroyed it.   
“Ignore him, Frank, now Ed’s just sorting it and then are you ready to get high, my man?” Jesse said, tightening his grip around me.  
“Y-yeah,” I said a little uncertainly but feeling more confident when Gerard dropped Amber’s hand and moved protectively next to me instead.  
“Wait, Poppy’s over there,” Tom smirked, nodding his head to a group of girls who had even fewer clothes on than Amber. I nervously looked up to see the apparent leader of them, staring straight into my soul with her cat-like green eyes. She had long black hair almost touching her waist, and had red glossy lips that looked like freshly washed cherries, and she fucking made me nervous.   
“Just go with it,” Gerard whispered into my hair as the girl marched over in her shiny red heels and black PVC outfit.  
“No, you did not blow my best friend off for that slag,” Amber shook her head.  
“Babe, shut up, she’s my friend!” Gerard snapped at her.  
“Friends? Are you fucking joking me? Friends don’t fuck Gerard!”  
“Some of them do,” he nudged me, but I was just a little hurt there was yet another girl he had apparently been with. I couldn’t blame him, she was intimidatingly beautiful, but she still wasn’t Gerard. Plus, her forwardness scared me a little. I think even in a different, more straight world, she still wouldn’t have been my type.  
“Hey, you must be Frankie!” She said, her voice huskier than I would have thought for such a petite girl.  
“Frank,” I said awkwardly correcting her as Amber stormed off and Gerard followed her.  
“Oh sorry, anyway, I’m Poppy!” She bent down and forwardly kissed my cheek, shocking me.   
“Erm hi,” I attempted to smile but probably ended up just looking in pain or something.  
“So Gerard said you’re single, right?”  
“Kinda,” I shrugged.  
“Kinda? What is that supposed to mean?”  
Fucking hell, I was going to be a virgin getting the reputation that Gerard had at this rate.   
“I dunno, I guess I was seeing someone but not really.”  
“Well, maybe you need a different girl to tie you down,” she smirked at me completely misreading what I was saying. I don’t think anybody could distract me from him, no matter what fucking gender they were.   
“Maybe,” I half smiled remembering the plan of trying to look straight. I thought I was doing quite well right up until I saw a pair of hurt blue eyes blinking at me from the corner of the kitchen. I saw Hannah’s eyes flicker from the stain on my cheek to the perfectly colour matching colour of Poppy’s lipstick as her brain worked out what must have been happening.  
“Hannah-“ I began before she already started walking away.  
“Woah, I wondered why Amber had been so off with me,” Poppy sniggered like she got enjoyment out of hurting people. “I thought it was just because I’d fucked her boyfriend before she had.”  
“You had sex with Gerard?” I pulled a grimaced face.  
“Few times, we were just friends with benefits though, it didn’t mean anything. He said he didn’t find it weird I like you, he told me to go for it,” she smiled at me. “So, I just wanted to get to know you maybe?” Her words stung, but it wasn’t anything I hadn’t heard before.  
“Yeah, erh, I just need to find my friend he’s got my pot,” I lied badly, needing a cool excuse to get away from her.  
“Well, come and find me when you’ve relaxed a little,” she half smirked again, leaning forward to place another kiss on the opposite cheek. I was quick to push my way out of the room searching frantically for Gerard. I was done, I needed to go home and away from these people.   
“Woah, Frank!” I felt somebody grab my arm. I was relieved to see it was Nathan, giving me that same doped up grin I had grown to find comforting. “Where you running to, shorty?”  
“I fucked up coming here Nath, I’m gonna get the bus to Kenny’s,” I sighed miserably.  
“What? Why?”  
“Because I don’t fit in! These people aren’t my people!”  
“I’m your people, Gerard’s your people! Plus, you little dope head, the others have been buzzing to get you high again because apparently, you’re funny when you smoke. Since when was my pot never good enough for you and theirs was?”  
“I just wanted to get a rise out of Gerard, I don’t even wanna smoke!” I whined.  
“Really? It’ll relax you man, I think you should. I promise not to tell Kenny as long as you don’t tell Matt that Kim was giving me the eyes earlier, yano!”  
“Kim?” I cringed knowing Nathan should most definitely not go there. Matt was in love with that girl who strung him along, whether he admitted it or not.   
“Yeah, but I kept your secret about Gerard, didn’t I? So maybe, if something happened you could keep your mouth shut.”  
“I-“  
“Because, like I said, I was a good friend about not telling Delo.”  
“Yeah, whatever Nath, do what you want,” I shrugged it off feeling bad. It wasn’t like Kim was the love of Matt’s life, and the sooner he learnt she would fuck his close friend, the better.  
“How is G?” Nathan asked, “does he know you wanna go and watch films with James?”  
“Kenny’s there too! No though, he fucked off after Amber somewhere,” I sighed.  
“Probably in the living room,” he motioned behind him to the loudest, smokiest room of them all. Joe had those ghastly green lasers shooting around the dark house again, making it almost impossible to see anything.   
“I’m just going to tell him this isn’t me, then I’m going to Ken’s, are you coming?”  
“I might stay you know? I promise I’ll still make it to his Halloween thing tomorrow though!”  
“Alright, well just be safe yeah, Nath? Also, don’t go ditching me for Delo now you’re getting all these new friends! He’s still a cunt!”  
“I’ll be safe and I could never ditch you, shorty!” He ruffled my hair in that almost patronising way he had mastered. I liked Nathan, he went with the flow, I just hope he did not get caught up in Joe Delo’s current.

I didn’t even want to tell Gerard that I was leaving, but I think subconsciously I wanted to tell him who I was going to see. I didn’t know why he was so jealous of James, but I knew it gaged a reaction from him. He couldn’t be angry though, he’d stalked off after who he was trying to convince me was his fake girlfriend. I wanted him to get that same uncomfortable knot in his stomach as I had in mine, the one that made my skin prickle and uncomfortable to be in. To me, envy was the worst emotion. It reminded me of everything I didn’t have and made me ungrateful for the things I did by making them appear not good enough. I hated being like this, but I was too far gone to change.

I decided to compose myself first, pushing my way through the bodies to get to the bathroom. It was weird being back in that room and just brought back the terrifying memories when I thought he wasn’t going to be okay. He was okay, and he still hadn’t fucking changed. I was still his second option.  
I looked down at my phone to see I had a video message from James.

**\- Ken wanted me to send you this, miss ya xo**

I smiled to myself, slumping against the cool tiled wall watching Kenny prance around with his Nicki Minaj wig on singing Seven Things by Miley Cyrus.   
“ _YOUR FRIENDS ARE JERKS WHEN YOU ACT LIKE THEM JUST KNOW IT HURTS!_ ” Kenny gave eyes to the camera and then mouthed the word Gerard after, the dork. I missed him so much that I dreaded to admit I almost got a lump in my throat. It wasn’t that it was Kenny singing old school Miley Cyrus that made me sad, it was that I wasn’t in my familiar surroundings. I was anxious and hurt, and I didn’t have Kenny or James’ stupid grins to make me feel better. Still, the sooner I got out of this bathroom, the sooner I could return to my little ginger freak and smother him in platonic affections and grovels to apologise for ditching him in the first place.

I walked back down into the smoky living room spotting Gerard and everybody straight away, the white powder still around his nose giving his secrets away. To be honest, it didn’t matter he still had the shit on his face, I could tell with the way he looked at me with dead eyes that he wasn’t there anymore. It made it worse because Amber was sat on his knee, turning her body towards him as and kissing his neck as he had his hand placed dangerously low on her hip, circling patters on her waist band. From the pink gloss smeared across his lips, it appeared that was not where the kisses had stopped.   
“Frankie,” he slurred, beaming at me as if I meant anything to him. “Where you been, bug?”  
“Bug?” Amber sniggered, “the fuck?”  
“Come sit down,” he looked up at me darkly, ignoring Amber’s confusion at the weird endearment. “Next to me.”  
“No, G, I’m going.”  
“No, you’re sitting down next to me,” he looked up at me with those hypnotic eyes that I found myself falling for again. Just five minutes, I told myself, then I could leave.   
“Where have you been?” He asked.  
“Spoke to Poppy, text James,” I shrugged earning an angry look from him. I couldn’t add anything to the conversation though because Amber pulled his face towards her and kissed him deeply. I felt as if I had been dropped into a batch of boiling hot oil, my skin blistering and popping and becoming unbearable to be in. I could see her dive her tongue in and out of his mouth, and he wasn’t fucking stopping it. Instead, he was ruthlessly clutching _MY_ leg, rubbing his hand up and down my thigh getting dangerously close to my crotch whilst kissing her back. I pushed his hand away and went to get up, he just grabbed my wrist though keeping me in place.  
“Can you two stop fucking for one hot minute?” Tom came back into the room, a pretty dark skinned girl on his arm. She had a messy tangle of dreads on her head and a fashion sense that did not quite match the other girls, making me instantly intrigued.  
“Just because I actually kiss my girl, man,” Gerard smirked, pulling back from Amber and winking at me only retracting his hand from my wrist enough so that it was not as obvious.   
“Oh, Gerard baby, you have no idea,” the girl with the smoky voice leant up and nibbled at Tom’s ear in front of us. “Who’s your friend?” The girl asked, not taking her almost black irised eyes off mine.  
“Frank, my best friend I told you about! Frank, this is Shannon Tom’s girlfriend. Don’t ask me how he got her, because I have no fucking clue!”  
“Oh, baby,” she smirked, “you can be as nice as you want, I’m still not fucking you!”   
“One day, Shan,” Gerard winked at her despite Tom and Amber both shooting him daggers.  
“Yeah, fucking leave it out!” Tom snapped, “right come on Frank!”  
“What is it?” I said cautiously lowering myself to the rug around the bong Shannon was preparing.  
“Weed,” he said pulling a dirty looking baggy with his stained fingers out of his pocket.  
“Tom,” Gerard warned in an intimidating manner. “Don’t.”  
“What?” I flickered my eyes between the two of them.  
“It’s special shit,” he confessed, “Deano got it me.”  
“What is it?”  
“It’s laced with coke, don’t you fucking touch it, Frank!” Gerard warned.  
“Don’t listen to fucking Henry Hoover over there because he’s already snorted like a ten bag man!” Tom shook Gerard off. I was nervous, but the fiery look in Gerard’s eyes only pushed me more. It wasn’t like I was snorting it, was it? It wasn’t pure cocaine, so it could have been that bad. In that moment though, I knew Tom could have produced heroin and I probably would have done it if it meant driving Gerard crazier.  
“Frank!” He warned again, this time more unkind than before.  
“I’ll do it,” I said accepting the bong from Shannon. “What’s the worst that could happen?”  
“Frank-“  
“Leave it, babe!” Amber snapped at him, “if he wants to get high, then fucking let the guy get high!”  
“Exactly, G, let me do what I want,” I glared at him.

I felt Gerard’s eyes burn into me as Tom lit the green leaves in the tube, filling the neck with smoke and the room with the noise of the water bubbling. I fully expected to be knocked off my feet or something, but it felt no different to the normal weed I had smoked earlier in the week. I felt it to be almost anti-climatic, right up until the fucker got into my bloodstream and sent my mind into a frenzy. I should have stopped after 3 hits, I was still new to this and I was almost forgetting how to breathe properly, but still, I accepted more when Tom shoved it in my face. Every time I took a hit, Gerard dragged his lips away from Amber and that was enough for me.   
“Hey boys,” I heard a slow, silky voice from behind me. I twisted my neck to see Poppy come and sit behind me, out of intoxication, I leant my head back onto her bare shoulder giggling at nothing.   
“Hi,” I grinned up at her dopily.   
“You’ve chilled out!” She laughed, stroking my cheek as if we'd known each other for years. Her touch left my skin tingly and oversensitive, but I didn’t hate the feeling. Her once intimidating eyes now made me hungry for something I did not quite understand.   
“Because he’s fucked!” Gerard snapped, “don’t give him any more of that shit!”  
“What came first, the chicken or the dick head,” I rolled my eyes at him, earning a laugh from the others.  
“Oh cool! Arctic Monkeys!” Poppy grinned at me.  
“You know AM?” I said, enjoying her body heat on my own.  
“Of course I fucking do!”  
“You just don’t look like the type!” My voice sounded thick, as if I had cotton wool in my ears as my thoughts swam.  
“There’s a lot of things you don’t know about me, Frankie,” she stroked my cheek again, making me lean into her more. I didn’t even protest to her using that God awful nickname that only sounded good falling off Gerard’s lips, mainly because I did not feel like myself anyway. My thoughts swam, but my body was weirdly still, Poppy’s frame keeping me stable. I felt bad for using her, but I was enjoying how close she was getting to me, driving my best friend insane with envy. He was a fucking hypocrite, he had a girl on his lap who he was kissing yet he was upset that I was talking to someone. Okay, she was being very touchy, her hot whispers leaving tingles on my skin, but he fucking deserved it. Everything had settled, the music still loud but my almost blocked senses making it more of a background dull-ache thing. Shannon and Tom were laying in each other's arms completely zoned out, tracing secrets on each other's bare skin that nobody else was allowed to know, leaving just me and Poppy. Oh, and Gerard’s scrutinising stare.   
“Blowback?” She said, her own voice matching the thickness of my own with her intoxication.   
“Huh?” I looked down at her with hazy eyes. She was now leaning on me, and me on the coffee table.  
“Come here,” she said in a low tone grabbing the bong and inhaling deeply. She shocked me by pulling me towards her, and for a moment I thought she was going to kiss me. Her lips did land on mine, but second-hand smoke infiltrated my mouth and lungs as she exhaled. Instead of pulling away straight away, she caught my bottom lip between her own and retracted slowly. I was more staring at her through being incredibly intoxicated and confused, but she smiled seductively as she caught me looking at her smudged lips.  
“Frank!” Gerard practically barked from the sofa, “come sit here!”  
“Boo!” Poppy laughed, tossing her glossy black hair back.  
“Fucking whore, man,” Amber kissed her teeth.  
“Excuse me, if I wanted to act like a whore I would have done this,” Poppy confidentially got to her feet and leant right over Amber to peck Gerard on his lips. I think it shocked us all, but all Amber could do was stare in frustration.   
“Now, I’m going to get myself a drink and then I’ll be back for you Frankie boy,” she bent back down to kiss my own lips again. That fucking girl was dangerous, almost as if she was the female version of Gerard. No wonder they got on so well.   
“Are you joking me?” Amber screamed in Gerard’s face as soon as Poppy had left the room. “Are you fucking joking me, Gerard?”  
“Babe! I didn’t know she wasn’t going to do that, did I?”  
“I’ll fucking go find her in a second!”  
“Ambs, don’t do that,” his voice was calm. “You know you’re my girl, you know you’re the most beautiful person to me in the world, right?” Despite my muted feelings, I could still feel the pang of jealousy as he tucked a stray hair behind her ear. I knew she was in love with him, and it looked as if he felt the same. If he loved her though, why was he so quick to act like that with me too?  
“I’ll show her what a whore is,” she got to her feet and went to the centre of the room where people were dancing where she found some of her friends. I glanced at her not knowing whether it was attractive or embarrassing the way she was throwing herself about like a stripper. There wasn’t anything wrong with stripping obviously, it was just tragic to watch someone fall so helplessly for him they felt as if they had to do that to keep his attention. Then again though, maybe I needed a mirror because I was the dick head sat there fucked out of my God damn mind on cocaine laced weed for him.

“Come here,” he nudged me with his foot, making me snap my eyes away from his girlfriend.   
“You can fuck off,” I knew I sounded anything but sober, but I was still going to curse him out.  
“Baby,” he tilted his head, “you know I have to say that shit, but you’re the only one I mean it to!”  
“No!” I glared at him, “m’going to Kenny’s.”  
“No, you’re fucking not! You can barely walk!” I seemed to prove his point as I got to my feet feeling as if the bottom half of my body had become paralysed. It felt as if my legs had been dangling in freezing cold water and I had no feeling in them, yet my head felt hot and fuzzy like I had spent too long in the sun. It resulted in me stumbling, falling right into his honey trap. To steady me, he quickly reached over and grabbed my arm but in the process pulled me to the sofa.  
“Stop fucking hurting me,” I begged him, my own words not making sense to me as I contradictory nuzzled into his neck.   
“You know you’re the only one that means something!” He tried to shush me, stroking my hair causing me to melt further into his frame.  
“I hate you, Gerard. I fucking hate you!”  
“But you love me, right?”  
I just nodded bitterly, letting him hold me in such a dangerous place.

 **// TW SH reference //**   
I wouldn’t say I began to sober up, I just was becoming more chilled out with the tone of his echoed laughter that I could feel in his chest in which I was leaning on. He was throwing careless insults back and forth to Tom and Shannon who were not batting an eyelid at our affections. To everybody else, I was a straight guy who wanted to fuck Poppy and he was even straighter and dating someone who could have been mistaken for an actual Victoria’s Secret model, so our embrace seemed meaningless. What they did not see, however, was how he was stroking my bare arm so delicately that he was breathing my senses back into me. Poppy had come back, but Gerard had convinced her to go and find him more cocaine that he said he did not want, he just wanted us to be alone. Amber was still dancing but was unaware of the fact Gerard was watching me and not her. Hearing his breaths did something to me, as I just felt a painful pang of neediness for him. I stared blankly at his arm, tracing my finger over the incredibly faint scars that still hurt my heart in the way they did all those years ago. The more in tune with them I became, the more I could almost feel the way his heart was not whole in his chest. It felt broken, and I ached to fix it.   
“ _No one knows the pain, no one sees what I see in you, no one feels the same, no one sees myself as you do,_ ” the song blared out of the speakers, my complete hearing coming back to me as if I had been plunged into an ice bucket. Despite the song being some chavvy shit Joe inevitably chose, the lyrics possessed me and I surged forward and tackled Gerard into a hug. It was a sort of desperate embrace that told him I needed him closer than ever before, a lump forming in my throat with how he was just not close enough to me. He’d looked so sad, looking out at the dark street that I could take it anymore.  
“Woah,” he giggled a little, but clutched me back, “everything okay, bug?”  
“I need you,” I scrunched my fingers in his hair.  
“What?”  
“I just-“ I lost my words and pulled back, desperate for him to answer for me.   
“Come here,” he said tangling my fingers with his own and hauling us both to his feet.  
 **/// TW END ///**

He dragged me up the stairs and into the second door in the matchbox house. From inside the dark room, I could hear the thumping of the sub-bass downstairs but at least the mummers of voices had stopped.  
“What’s up, baby?” He said in a concerned manner. Although I could not see him, I tackled him into a forceful hug again that nearly knocked us both to our feet.   
“I love you, Gerard,” I confessed into the darkness.  
“I love you too! You know that I do!”  
“No, I’m _in_ love with you,” I whined mumbling my words into the crook of his neck. “I can’t remember a time when I haven’t been in love with you.”  
I panicked about his response, half expecting him to walk out and leave me with my deepest, darkest secret. Instead, he smashed his lips on my own in an open-mouthed kiss, dragging his hands to clutch me tighter. His hands did not stay on my waist for long, instead, the moved further down to cup my ass as my own splayed on his chest, grabbing at his T-shirt to get him even closer to me. His tongue entered my mouth, pushing against my own as I whimpered desperately for more.  
“Wait,” he mumbled dragging his lips away from me long enough to lock the door behind us. I was only satisfied with the disconnection because I was kissing his neck, sucking harshly to claim him as just mine. He struggled with the bolt for a little while because of his shaky fingers, before spinning us around forcefully and making us tumble backwards onto a bed.  
“Is this not dangerous?” My eyes fluttered closed as he lay his body on top of my own, grinding into me as he went, trailing wet butterfly kisses along my jaw.  
“Yeah, this is Joe’s room,” he smirked against me before working his tongue on my hot skin. The action caused me to shiver, but he still was not close enough.   
“Won’t he come in?” I panicked, despite the locked door.  
“Trust me, baby, Joe won’t be bringing anybody back here,” he laughed.  
“Huh?” I began but moaned instead when I felt his hand snake up my thigh and grab my crotch through my jeans.   
“Why do you think he’s been off school? Fucker was playing with fire when he didn’t use a condom.”  
“Huh?” I said again, gasping when I felt his hard dick grind against my own.  
“He’s got clap again,” he sniggered, “but can we stop talking about Delo and his STIs right now?”  
I silently agreed by ripping my own T-shirt over my head.

**///// ~~SW~~ ////**

I didn’t know if it was the drugs or my love for him, but suddenly everything became oversensitive. I was growing hotter with every touch, like skin covering an infection, but still, it wasn’t enough. The noises I was eliciting from my mouth probably would have been cringe-worthy if they weren’t so needed. I was almost whimpering for his touch, needing it more than oxygen at that moment. My emotions had escaped me like lightning from a dark cloud, creating a spark all around us which was only gaining more charge with his deep, open-mouthed kisses. I impatiently lifted up his t-shirt and tossed it carelessly to the side of us, aching for the feeling of his warm chest on my own to remind me he was real. We were so close, I could feel his heartbeat. It was so loud to me, the bass coming from downstairs had become drowned out by the noise of him being alive. He was living, he was breathing and in that moment, he belonged to me.   
He had been cupping me on the outside of my jeans, but had soon become impatient with the act, almost breaking my zipper by pulling it down with such force. My hands were shaking as I reached for his and did the same, needing to feel more of his body. He kicked off his trousers so I followed and did the same to mine, just taking a moment to appreciate the touch of his soft skin on mine. He was breathing heavily, just as impatiently as I was, beginning to grind against me. With the act, I ran my hands down his back pulling at the waistband to his underwear, taking them down as far as I physically could before he had to help me out. Seeing him completely bare only made me need him more, I needed him to know he was beautiful. The room was dark but my eyes had adjusted enough to see just that slight hint of pale flesh and curve of muscles under it. I felt his shoulders flex under my touch as he moved against me making the moment more real. I clutched at him desperately, begging for more of him which was met by him tugging at my own boxer shorts. We had both been naked and kissed before, but never quite like this. Our bodies were moving against each other rhythmically as I could feel every fucking inch of him. He kissed me more deeply than he ever had before as I wrapped my leg around one of his own to keep him there. I had no fucking clue what I was doing, yet somehow my body was guiding me. I could feel how turned on we both were, grinding harshly into one another as if it was all going to be taken away from us at any moment. Technically, it all could have been. We were in Joe’s bed, but this wasn’t about him anymore. I didn’t care about hurting him like I once had, all I cared about was having Gerard and having him right at that moment.   
“Please,” I begged him when I physically could not stand it anymore. It was weird, I was emotional but not just in a sad way. It was just like feeling every single emotion at once, sadness, anger, happiness, love; fucking all of them. I hadn’t realised how cold I had grown until he had warmed me up. I thought I had known love before, but it was fucking nothing compared to this. Love was painful, it ruined my life for many years, but it was worth it all for this. I suddenly understood every cringe-filled love song and every God awful poem because I suddenly felt all those words for him. The sadness I felt was worth it, just so long as those overwhelming green eyes kept looking at me like that.   
“I-“ he began, but hovered above my body instead. I had been bucking my hips encouraging him to go further than he ever had before, parting my legs to let him have the access he needed. “It doesn’t work like that.” He groaned in frustration.   
“Why? Why does it have to be different?”  
“Because I don’t wanna hurt you. I don’t have a fucking clue what I’m doing but I know you need to like-“   
“Do you not want to?” I asked in horror.   
“I fucking want to more than I’ve wanted anything,” he groaned in my hot neck moving against me to prove it. “I just don’t wanna hurt you like that. I think we need to like research it or-“  
“I don’t care if it hurts! I just want you to, please,” I begged up at him. For a moment, he kissed me deeply and we soon became lost in each other’s bodies again. I knew I wouldn’t have lasted long, I had never been so turned on in my life. It wasn’t just about sex though, I just needed to be closer to him. I felt him line up against me, almost pushing himself into me until he just stopped there.   
“I told you, I don’t care how much it hurts!” I whined, lifting my hips off the bed to try and encourage him further. I felt his hips twinge slightly before he moaned in frustration into my open mouth.   
“You’re fucked, this isn’t right,” he physically tore our bodies apart, leaving me cold with how much I had been anticipating him.   
“I want you to!”   
“No! Like I said, you’re really fucked and I need you to be okay. I waited so long for this, I’m not gonna ruin it!”  
“How would you ruin it?” I asked feeling hurt at his rejection.   
“We don’t have anything here... to make it easier. It’s gonna hurt and feel horrible especially for you. Finally, I want you to want to do it not just because you’re drunk and horny, man” he half laughed despite not sounding amused.   
“I told you, I’m in love with you,” I muttered trying to still my heavy beating chest.   
“And I’m in love with you too, so just trust me on this, it’s better to wait.”  
As much as his rejection hurt, his words instantly soothed me like a burn bathed in ice. He had just said he was in love with me, and the thought lifted me higher than ever before. His words had finally given me the closeness I had been craving, the closeness I’d wanted my whole life, not just tonight. His word engulfed and cradled me in a way no one else on this planet could; well apart from him of course. I think he took my silence for hurt though as he quickly began speaking again.   
“I’m telling you I really want to,” He pecked my lips, “but for now...” he trailed off placing open mouthed kisses along my naked chest moving down until he settled on my hip bones. The graze of his tongue and teeth on the sharp bone there made me squirm, especially when he kept me still by grabbing my dick. His hand had never felt so good because this wasn’t just about fucking anymore, it was about confessing our love in the most open sort of way. Fucking was rushed and selfish, but this was more than that. He moved his hand up and down, squeezing slightly before he finally moved his lips to around the tip and swirled his tongue on the ridge.   
“Fuck,” I groaned wrapping my fingers in his hair feeling him move up and down on me. It was dangerous because, despite the loud music, anybody could have been listening. If two already questioned friends emerged looking ruffled after spitting curse words from a bedroom, I think it would have been too blatant. I liked it though, it was almost like chasing a storm. I was back in the eye of Gerard’s disaster, but the destruction around me made me giddy. I felt his tongue run along my vein before hollowing his cheeks around me. I would never overcome that feeling, especially now I understood why he was so addicted to it. The only thing better than fucking about was fucking about with somebody you were in love with. Out of nowhere, he hummed softly around me before letting me hit the back of his throat. I didn’t know if it was the physical feeling of it, or the thought of it but it made me gasp out his name. It was probably both, but whatever it was, it was doing things to me I could never have even imagined.   
“Like that?” He smirked up at me, pulling off slightly causing me to whine in frustration.   
“Yes-“ I said in a breathless voice, barely regaining myself enough to produce any words that were comprehendible. Thankfully, he did not keep me waiting and instead did that fucking thing all over again. The feeling of the back of his throat and hollowing cheeks around me sent me over the edge as I felt waves of pleasure surround and engulf me. This time, he did not pull back despite myself spilling into his mouth. Instead, he kept me in his mouth, stroking me through my pleasure until it was over. I dreaded to think about how loud I had been, but the way he kissed around my stomach with his now puffy lips, he did not seem to mind too much.   
“Have I redeemed myself a little bit?” He grinned, dipping his used tongue around the soft skin of my thigh.   
“Mm,” was all I could manage as I sat there and basked in the elation I still felt all over my body. His eyelashes ticked my inner leg as he brought it up to kiss more, not seeming satisfied that things were over. It then suddenly dawned on me he was still painfully hard, almost moving against the bed to satisfy himself enough to not come across as needy. I don’t know why he was so apprehensive around me, I mean it was clear I was consenting to everything. I think he just thought of me as delicate, as if I had been the one who had struggled in our past. This had taught me that Gerard was not delicate though, he could be anything I fucking wanted him to be. I still wanted to protect him from the harsh world, but I felt shivers knowing that he could also protect me too. I felt that urge again, the one to tackle him into an almost bone-crushing embrace so I did. It meant we had swapped ends of the bed, but I couldn't separate us enough to move back. I looked down at him before kissing his neck and trailing down his body like he had done to me earlier.   
“No,” he said quickly.   
“What?” I asked in utter confusion.   
“I wanna kiss you, just,” he did not verbalise what he wanted but instead grabbed my hand and placed it on the taut V shape muscle above his crotch. I felt his breathing hitch as my hand stayed there, which was only made worse when I kissed him. I shouldn’t have believed his words of love, but the psychical reaction he was giving me made it hard not to. If he wasn’t in love with me, why was his heart beating so fucking hard against my chest?   
I propped my body over his own, tangling my tongue with his, slowly. My jaw fucking ached from kissing him, so I only dreaded to think how his felt, but it wasn’t enough to stop us. With one hand I held his head to keep our kiss deep and sensual, whilst my other hand slowly trailed down to touch him. His hands had been on settled on my back but he had quickly changed to digging his stubby nails in as I stroked him. I started slow but the way he was whining out for me made me speed up as I became greedy for his moans. I twisted my hand, focusing more attention on the tip before speeding up again. He was so wrapped up in the moment that his tongue was almost still against my own as his head nearly fell back out of pleasure. In that moment, I was in control of him. He was scraping his nails along my back, begging me for more, and I enjoyed the power. I wasn’t going to abuse it, I was going to give him everything he fucking deserved. The more I touched him, the more he seemed to crumble. I had obviously seen him like this before, but he had never given into it like this. It was like before he was holding back those other times, still wanting to appear dominant like he had to in front of all those girls. To me though, he was unravelling himself and I was stitching us back together into a joint cotton.   
“I-“ he whimpered as I twisted my hand again.   
“Now?” I asked him without a response. Instead, he smashed his lips back out to mine, crying out as I felt him warm and wet spill into my hand.   
“I love you,” He gasped into my open mouth, his tongue almost tickling me with the vibrations it caused. “I fucking love you.”  
I grinned against him, “I love you more.”

**///////**

“That’s Erh- never happened before, sorry,” he blushed as I collapsed onto his chest, tracing patterns on the bare skin there.   
“What?” I hummed.   
“Like, I don’t usually confess my love for anybody when I’m cuming, yano? It’s embarrassing,” I felt his skin grow hot like he was blushing.   
“Maybe you just haven’t loved any of those girls before,” I muttered darkly.   
“I think that you’re right,” he confessed into the darkness, sending shivers down my spine and love tumbling from my heart. 


	38. Love can beat us black and blue, but darling I'll take the punches for you

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> SORRY FOR THIS TAKING SO LONG!! I had a busy weekend then I got ill but I hope this is okay

“Where have you fuckers been?” Nathan asked as me and Gerard sheepishly walked downstairs together.  
“Nose bleed,” we both said in unison, probably sounding way too over-rehearsed. Of course, Nathan knew our secret, but the people he was sat with definitely didn’t, especially Joe.  
“I got a nose bleed,” Gerard confirmed, a little less practiced than before.  
“Well, you better not have got that shit on the carpet,” Joe grumbled, obviously not happy that Gerard had been with me and not him.   
“Nah,” he confirmed. My head was still feeling fuzzy and I still needed the closeness to Gerard. I probably looked like a freak, just hovering behind him, not quite being able to touch him in that moment, but I didn’t care.  
“Babe!” Amber ran through the crowd of his friends, placing a wet, intoxicated kiss on his lips. I should have been irked, but I saw the way he pursed his lips together to almost avoid the action in a subtle way.   
“I’m fine,” he batted her hand away from his face, “I just feel light headed, so I’m gonna head home.”  
“No!” Joe snapped before Amber could. “It’s only just turned midnight, you’re not going home yet.”  
“I feel like shit, Delo,” Gerard whined.   
“Tough, now come with me to the bathroom,” he dragged my best friend away, leaving me with his impatient looking girlfriend.

“I know what you’re doing,” Amber glared at me, making my blood run cold for a second.  
“What?” I frowned back.  
“You’re trying to get him to go back to how he was before, so you can go and find girls together,” she accused me, hurt coating in her voice. She couldn’t have been more wrong, but I still felt guilty. I didn’t mean to wrap her up in all this, but I loved him too much to let her take him from me.  
“Are you joking?” I laughed in her face, the drugs still controlling my actions.  
“No! Everyone thinks you’re so innocent, but I know what you did to Hannah!”  
“You’re delusional, man,” I snapped at her and attempted to walk off.   
“He loves me, Frank! You might want to waste your time with girls like Poppy but we’re happy together!”   
“Yeah, whatever, Amber,” I shook her off. One thing she should learn is that you should never try and trap Gerard in a cage, it’ll only make him run away.

I was going to leave, but I felt uneasy about doing so because I had no clue where Joe had dragged Gerard. For all I knew, he could have been doing another tab, even after the diabolical attempt last time. I shouldn’t have cared if he was stupid enough to do that shit again then so be it, but I obviously still did. I felt mixed emotions still, all of them battling to take dominance leaving me hot and uncomfortable. I decided to go and sit outside on that very wall that we had sat on together when he was out of it, just trying to compose my thoughts more than anything. He said that he was in love with me, but I was still sat there alone.   
“Hey,” I heard from behind me. I span around to see Hannah stood awkwardly.  
“Don’t fuckin’ start,” I grumbled, not feeling mentally stable or sober enough to be verbally abused for being something that I wasn’t.   
“No, I’m not here for an argument, I just came to say sorry,” she shrugged. I don’t know why that girl was so fixated on me because, despite my dislike for her, she was out of my league. I think Amber had ground her down to believe she was nothing more than her follower though, expecting everyone to fall at her feet and tearing down everybody who didn’t.   
“Huh?”  
“Look, can I sit?”  
“Go for it,” I chuckled cynically, as she set her body next to mine, swinging her thin legs nervously.  
“I didn’t mean to give you this reputation with my friends, yano, I was just hurt because for once I thought someone wanted me over Amber. Then you didn’t though, and I guess I just freaked out a bit.”   
She hadn’t made my life hell, but she had caused annoyance like hay fever or something. I should have walked away, but the sincerity in her voice made me stop and think. This girl had been made to believe she was second best her whole entire life, and I’d made it worse. I wasn’t Gerard, I couldn’t just hurt people and not care. Although it was not intentional, at the end of the day I had caused her pain, and that just didn’t sit well with me.  
“Wasn’t you,” I shrugged.  
“But you’re in love with somebody else, right?”  
“Erh,” I began to argue, but she just smirked.  
“I’m not stupid, Frank.”  
“How did you know?”  
“Just got a feeling, yano? You have that look behind your eyes all the time like you’re thinking of them or whatever.”  
“I’m sorry, I should never have lead you on-“  
“Don’t sweat it,” she said quickly, “whoever she is though, she’s really fucking lucky. No one treated me like you did, no matter how short-lived it was.”  
“Hah, you’d be surprised,” I almost rolled my eyes. I wasn’t a good person, I was seeing her best friends boyfriend.   
“Well, I better go back but you might wanna go fetch Gerard.”  
“Why?”  
“Well, he’s just fucked up again. It’s like he can’t say no when Joe tells him to do something, he needs you.”  
“Tell me about it,” I sighed getting to my feet, getting ready to haul him to safety.  
“You’re good for him. Just don’t give up on him, yeah? If you weren’t around, I don’t know what’d happen to him.”  
“You’re not the first person to say that,” I smirked. “Don’t worry, I’d never leave him, I love him too much.”  
And fuck, I meant that more than ever before.

I wasn’t surprised to walk back into the party to see Gerard slumped over the kitchen counter, giggling at nothing with Ed.   
“Baby booooy,” he slurred, ruffling my hair making Ed laugh more. I don’t think he thought it as weird, but that was probably because he was fucked to oblivion on something a little stronger than liquor. Apparently, so was Gerard. His eyes were doing that weird thing where they could not focus, and that instantly sobered me up a lot.   
“Come on, G, I’ll take you home before Joe comes back,” I grabbed his arm in a friendly way when in reality, I just wanted to lace my fingers with his.   
“Boo!” Ed said, “don’t go, Gerard!”  
“M’gonna go,” he confirmed, “Frankie told me I have to, so I’m gonna go.”  
“Fuck’s sake, man!” I said out of agitation, he wasn’t making it an easy task to drag him.  
“Lemme just say bye!” He stumbled into Ed in the attempt of a handshake, making them both splutter with laughter again.   
“See you tomorrow Gez!” Ed said, slapping their hands together in a sloppy fist bump.  
“Nah, got to go to my aunt’s tomorrow.”  
“You better not be ditching us for Amber!”  
“No! Going to my aunt’s ain’t I, Frank?”  
“Yeah, he’s going to his aunt’s,” I confirmed, knowing he didn’t dare tell Ed that he was going to spend the day watching Tim Burton films and carving pumpkins with Kenny.   
“Right, make sure he gets home safe, Frankie boy,” Ed slapped his hand against my own as if I’d suddenly joined the club or something. Okay, I didn’t like them much, but maybe the only one who I truly despised was Joe.   
“Of course he will! Love of my fucking life, bro!” Gerard ruffled my hair again, laughing, finally let me drag him out of the party and to the wall to wait for yet another taxi.

I couldn’t be mad at him, despite being stupidly coked off his head. I used to find him almost formidable when he was in this state, but with the deeper love I now had for him, all I saw was bliss. I didn’t approve of the drugs, I just approved of the way he tossed his head back carelessly in the taxi singing Wonderwall at the top of his fucking lungs.   
“ _AND MAYBE, YOU’RE GONNA BE THE ONE THAT SAVES ME_ ,” he giggled at the overplayed lyrics, not caring about the way the driver was looking at him. The driver wasn’t the only one though, as I caught myself gazing at him adoringly.  
“What?” He frowned, “have I got something on my face?”   
“Yeah,” I smirked, “me.”  
I lunged forward and kissed him quickly, making us both laugh.  
“You make me sick,” he rolled his eyes, “but I fucking love it, secretly.”

——

Like every cringe-filled Larry I’d ever fucking read, I fell asleep kissing him and curled up in his arms whilst he continued to randomly burst out humming that stupid fucking Oasis song every time I thought he was drifting off.

We had gone back to his house because I knew my clothes smelt of the weed I had consumed. It wasn’t like Gerard’s mom was okay with it, he was just better at hiding it than I was. He kept a secret laundry bag that he washed in the middle of the night so his mother would not catch the scent of smoke on his clothes, and I just wished Joe knew that. Gerard could act hard all he wanted, he could get arrested, he could snort coke and he could fuck endless girls, but he was still scared of his mom at the end of the day.

I think we both woke up feeling shitty. My head still felt fuzzy, like a big rain cloud was forming in my brain that was so heavy it made me almost drowsy. He was worse though, and we were both thankful for the fact he had an ensuite with how much he threw up.  
“That’s why you don’t drink and do coke,” I said in a perfectly patronising tone as he slid back into bed, the colour completely drained from his face.  
“Fuck off, you can hardly talk!” He grumbled, burying his face deeply into my chest.  
“I only smoked that shit to piss you off!”  
“Well, congrats because you fuckin’ did!”  
“Such a hypocrite, man,” I shook my head but tickled his back to send him back to sleep.

“Do we have to go to Kenny’s?” He whined as the clock crept closer to 1, the time we’d said we’d be at his house for.  
“Yes!” I declared not wanting to disappoint Kenny. I had drunkly messaged him last night asking if Gerard could come with me today, and of course, he was buzzing for it to happen.   
“I’m so hung over,” he whined.  
“Tough fucking tits, G, get up!”  
“Fine, but I’m wearing my comfy cardigan,” he said as if I’d ever fucking mind that he’d wear his old clothes.  
—-

He didn’t perk up until we got to Kenny’s house, but I didn’t mind so much. As a result of him feeling so ill, he was being extra clingy to me which I think was what I needed with how intense things had gotten last night. He hadn’t said he loved me again yet, but I could almost tell by the way he kept physical contact with me and how I caught him looking at me when he thought I was preoccupied.

“Gerard!” Kenny said, excitement dripping in his voice as he answered the door.  
“Fuckin’ charming,” I laughed.  
“Sorry! Hey, Frank, where’s your costume?” He frowned at me and my very boring tracksuit bottoms and hoodie. I felt the need to be warm and cosy, but I didn’t dare tell Kenny it was because my body felt fucking rejected from the night before. Gerard wasn’t dressed any more adventurous, he was wearing that stupid oversized cardigan, a boring white t-shirt and jeans that were considered baggy for him. Of course, Kenny would never call Gerard out though, he was like a little kid looking up at his fucking idol.   
“Sorry, I slept at his last night so I left it at home,” I lied, feeling a little guilty. Kenny’s theme this year was animals and he had painted his face pink and wore a fake pig nose, obviously going all out because it was Kenny. Gerard tried to hide a snigger under his sleeve, but I caught it, which almost set me off too.

We followed Kenny into the house, himself and his mother taking the decorations to an extreme. The whole kitchen was kitted out on bin liners to protect the surfaces from pumpkin and he had hung faux spider webs everywhere. I felt even guiltier when I saw the big bowl of red Kool-Aid, contrasting with the amber liquor that was on offer last night. I found it odd that people like Joe and Poppy were the same age as Kenny. I felt somewhere lost in between, only I just wanted to skip those God awful years of drinking every weekend and experimenting. I knew who I wanted to be with, I didn’t have to search in dark, smoky clubs trying to find somebody to love like others my age did.   
“Here’s Elton and David!” Matt said from one of the table and chairs that had been set up. It appeared yet again Kenny was the only one to truly make an effort. Matt and Harry were both wearing fake rabbit ears and Nathan had not bothered, looking just as ill as Gerard and I. I did almost have to laugh when I caught James’ eye though, obviously he had not been prepared either so had half arsed drawn cat whiskers on his face like some 2013 Dan and Phil fangirl. He mouthed at me to fuck off, but undeniably sniggered at how ridiculous this was.   
“Your homophobia is cute, Matt,” Gerard smiled out of amusement of Matt’s ignorance.   
“I’m not homophobic! I’ve been friends with these faggots for years!” He protested, earning a sharp but jested punch from Nathan. Like I said, me and Matt had a facetious relationship, no joke being too far because, at the end of the day, we both had each other's backs. I felt like I had that relationship with everybody close to me in my life, I could take the piss out of them all I wanted, but as soon as someone else did, I got defensive.   
“Right, I haven’t got enough pumpkins because _somebody_ ,” Kenny glared at me, “did not give me enough warning that Gerard would be joining us-“  
“He can have mine!” I said quickly, just wanting to sit in peace without having to force creativity out of my tired brain.  
“Nah, have mine!” Nathan said quickly, his red rung eyes also telling tales of last night. I don’t think I would have noticed without context, but I saw the love bite he was desperately trying to hide from Matt.   
“No, Nathan! Honestly, I’ll help G!” I said just as fast, sticking my tongue out at him when Kenny wasn’t looking, earning me a middle finger from him.  
“Fuck head,” Gerard reached between us and squeezed my hand but did not let go. We were both nervous to show our affections, but knew here was a safe place to do it.

I eventually won against the protests between me, Gerard and Nathan on who was going to sit out the pumpkin carving. I don’t think Gerard would have admitted it, but I think he quite enjoyed it. I watched utter tranquillity take over as his face as he carefully etched away at the skin of the pumpkin with a scalpel, sticking his tongue out the side of his mouth the utmost concentration. He had perfected the task a lot more than the others, varying his pressure to create different effects and transparencies of light.   
“Right, we all have to turn them around one by one and Frank can decide who wins,” Kenny said eagerly, excited his masterpiece was now done. To fit in with the theme of his Halloween party, Kenny insisted we did animal carvings. Matt span his around first, and all I could do was laugh.   
“Erh, What is it?” I tried to stifle my giggles at the mess.   
“Are you joking me? It’s a spider!”   
“Looks like a fucking mess, bro,” I smirked, much to his displeasure. Harry and Nathan’s attempts weren’t much better with an off looking dog and cat. Kenny had tried his best bless him, but the pig he carved at attempts to match his costume had con-caved a little as he applied too much pressure to a delicate part of his pumpkin. James surprised me, his attempt of a lion was almost decent.   
“I didn’t know you had it in you, Jam,” I said sounding impressed at his skills. Although the guy was not art inclined, he still seemed chuffed with the compliments.   
“Go on then, Gerard,” Kenny said grinning with excitement.   
“Nah, do I have to?” He whined, obviously the game not being something his usual friends would suggest.   
“Yes!”   
“Fine,” he grumbled and span around the pumpkin. He was miles ahead of the rest in terms of ability, his art fuelled past obviously taking the first place. I saw him look embarrassed as my eyes glanced over the ladybug he had expertly carved into the pumpkin, which he modestly tried to spin back around quickly.   
“You did a bug,” I grinned at him.   
“Gerard, that is so good!” Kenny said forcing him to face the fruit towards us all.   
“Yeah, thanks,” he mumbled.   
“Can I put it outside?” Kenny asked.   
“Go for it, Ken,” he chuckled as he picked up the pumpkin and began carrying it to the front door. I looked around the room awkwardly as James had already discard of the lion he had carved.   
“Erm, James, you win,” I tried to cheer him up, despite the task being fucking juvenile.   
“Nah, don’t say that to not hurt his feelings with his obese lopsided looking lion!” Matt sniggered.   
“No! I just erm, think James won!”   
“Don’t feel like you’re walking on fucking glass by my account!” James snapped at me, getting to his feet to get himself a drink of the virgin punch. 

“Ignore him, baby,” Gerard whispered into my hair once Kenny had come back in and begun taking everyone’s order for the takeaway. I hadn’t really paid any mind to James’ shortness with me, it was becoming more often than not at the minute. Plus, it was kinda hard to care with the way Gerard had his arm placed around my waist on the bench. James was sat on his phone, trying his hardest to not join in any conversation, even when it was directed at him.   
“I am, I don’t get why he’s being like this,” I sighed.   
“Hmm,” he simply hummed, stroking small circles with his thumb on my back.   
“Gerard, what do you want?” Kenny asked him, tossing the menu to the pizza place in his hands.   
“I’m alright thanks, bro!” Gerard quickly shook off the menu, but that wasn’t a surprise. I found it absolutely barbaric that somebody who pumped endless poisons into their body every weekend was fully under the belief that junk food would destroy him. I guess Gerard only really cared about his health when the effects were visible. Some might say that he was shallow and vain, I didn’t think he was, I just thought he was broken.  
“My moms paying! You gotta order something!”  
“Ken, I already ate,” Gerard lied, meaning that I shot him a warning glare. I knew he had skipped all his meals today, favouring a Starbucks instead. He always told me not to worry because coffee had calories in it, which it did, but that’s all he ever fucking consumed apart from dry rice and chicken.   
“Don’t look at me like that,” he whined once Kenny had moved on to Matt, who had a whole list of things that he wanted to eat.   
“It’s a pizza! You could eat all of it and you still wouldn’t be consuming enough calories for today because I know you wouldn’t eat anything else!” I was careful, I didn’t want to make him feel bad, I just wanted him to relax a bit.   
“I’ll get fat again,” he uttered, not being able to maintain our eye contact.  
“No! For one, you weren’t even fat before and if you did though, who gives a fuck! I love you no matter what, even if you grew six heads or something,” I blurted out, not really meaning to confess my love for him in Kenny’s kitchen where I knew James was sitting a bit too close to be discreet. I just had to tell him though, he was driving me crazy that he couldn’t see he was everything everyone wanted to be. People wanted him, and those who didn’t wanted to be him. He never saw that though, he just saw a failure buried under a cocky facade.   
“You love me?” He smirked.  
“You know that I do,” I blushed. He did not quite say it back in a conventional way, instead, he did something much better.  
“You know what Ken, can I just get pepperoni one, please?”

——

I was surprised at how much he ate. I had not seen him take a bite of something considered unhealthy for a good 6 months, and even then he’d felt guilty about it. Now he was carelessly laughing away with Nathan about something Joe was doing the night before, almost finishing the daunting 10inch meal in front of him.   
“G, do you want to put your music on?” Kenny had asked as we all sat down to eat the dessert his mother had prepared. For our main, Kenny had insisted on listening to Demi Lovato because of his date next week with Maisie, but Matt had bitched enough he’d agreed to turn it off after the pizza.   
“I don’t think you’d like it, Ken,” Gerard chuckled, actually taking a small bit of the chocolate cake. I mean it was tiny, but it was something.   
“No, I will! Just put it on!” He tossed Gerard his phone. I knew he would not put any of his old taste on just for the simple fact he wanted to prove how different he was to James. I knew the tension between them was rising as I caught them glaring at each other several times, but there was nothing I could do. I was just thankful my other friends now got on with him, especially Kenny. Kenny usually never let anyone disrupt his pop parties, let alone for shitty grime.   
“Erm ‘kay,” Gerard agreed, “I’ll put a Halloween one on for ya!”  
It was comical to see Kenny nod his head out of time to the shitty rhythm.  
“This is rad!” Kenny said, trying to hum along to lyrics and a beat that he did not know, and clearly did not actually like.   
“ _Rad_!” Matt mocked him, causing us all to try and hide our laughter.   
“What’s it called?” Kenny asked, “I’m going to add it to my Spotify!”  
“Horror Flick by AJ Tracey.”  
“No! Don’t destroy my friend with your God awful rap music!” I whined.  
“I thought you liked AJ?” He smirked down at me, like I was supposed to understand what he was hinting at.  
“I don’t know who AJ is,” I pulled a face.  
“I thought his songs turned you on?” He raised an eyebrow.  
“Gerard!” I slapped him because all of my fucking friends were listening. “I don’t know what he’s on about!” I added, getting flustered at the mention of being turned on in front of them.  
“Last night! That AJ Tracey song came on and you like mauled me, not that I minded,” he nuzzled his nose into my hair.  
“Oh, here we go!” Matt whined, “If you two can’t control yourself, I’m leaving!”  
“Gerard!” I squeaked as he retracted his touch, looking smug at how worked up he had gotten me. I wasn’t used to personal displays of affections, especially with my friend's nosey eyes all on us.   
“Love ya,” he shrugged placing a wet kiss on my burning hot cheek.

—-

Kenny had chosen to put on Frankenweenie, despite not being able to watch it without crying still to this day. It was probably one of my favourites off his list of ones to watch at Halloween, but I was a little preoccupied this year. Gerard had sat in the corner of the corner sofa, stretching his legs out. I went to sit on the floor next to him on a bean bag because there was not enough room for the two of us until he pulled me by my hand to sit almost on top of him. The position was too close to be considered friendly, despite there being some distance between us, especially when he pulled my head down to rest on his shoulder.

We hadn’t been watching the film, instead, he had simply been looking at me, stroking my cheek softly in the process. Our legs had become tangled with one another’s, and my hand had managed to snake its way around his waist to hold him closer to me. The room was dark and the only thing lighting us up was the black and white graphics flickering on the screen, but it was still enough to see the gleam in his eyes. It was hard to describe how they were looking at me, almost hazy with his hangover, but still so fucking intense. It was confusing to explain but fuck it, Gerard was confusing. It was suddenly like no one else was in the room, that was the power that his gaze had. He had me under such a spell, that I could no longer even hear the film, it was just like some drone in the background as I could not snap my eyes from his. I felt my stomach flutter in excitement as he edged closer to me, knowing full well what was about to happen in front of everyone, and not really giving a shit. I usually hated PDAs, especially when they involved Gerard, but that was before they were with me. He began by pecking at my lips three times, staying on the last one to rub his nose against my own sending shivers down my spine. He had still been delicately stroking my cheek, up until he instead tilted my chin towards him to deepen our kiss. He placed one more open-mouthed kiss on my lips before pushing his tongue against my own meaning that we were full on kissing in a new environment. Okay, I wasn’t exactly walking on a tightrope 100 feet in the air, but it sure fucking felt like it. I liked the uncertainty of the situation though, it made his kiss that much sweeter with excitement.

“If you two are going to get off, do you have to make that gross kissing noise?” Matt whined, throwing a cushion at us. I pulled back from Gerard lazily.  
“Hmm?” I hummed, before he simply dragged me back towards him, that I was only happy to oblige to.  
“Leave them alone, Matt!” Harry laughed.  
“Nah, it’s not fair! I’m single and it’s been like 4 months since I’ve even kissed a girl so they shouldn’t rub it in my face!”  
“Not their fault you’ve got blue balls, bro,” Nathan laughed as we finally broke apart as all eyes were now on us. Well, all except James’ who was glaring at the paused film.   
“Yeah, because even them kissing is turning me on and I’m about as straight as a fucking ruler man!” Matt whined.  
“Ew,” I rolled my eyes.  
“Yeah, a fucking bendy ruler. We all know you wanna piece of this,” Harry mocked him by posing in his attempt of a seductive manner.   
“Nah, trust me, I still want a girl. What’s the fun when there are no tits to grab?” Matt made a grabby gesture, as if anyone needed that fucking visual.  
“You just grab other things,” Gerard smirked, causing me to blush and slap him away for saying something like that in front of Kenny.  
“So,” Matt crossed his legs and turned to face us, “Franks a gentleman who doesn’t give up much info, so are you gonna spill?”  
“Spill what?” He frowned.  
“If you’ve fucked yet!”  
“For someone who’s so straight, you’re weirdly interested in my sex life, bro,” I glared at him.  
“Yeah, it’d be homophobic if I wasn’t, wouldn’t it? I always ask for details when Harry’s seen a girl!”  
“Nah not yet,” Gerard shrugged “somebody wanted to,” he half smirked at me. “But he was too drunk.”  
“What? You’re telling me the boy who’s more interested in football than his dick actual wanted sex for once?”   
“Fucking nose bleed, my arse,” Nathan rolled his eyes.  
“What? Tell me!” Matt whined.  
“They disappeared last night for fucking ages, and then said Gerard had a nose bleed,” Nathan informed the others, much to my dismay.  
“ _Nooooo_!” Matt and Harry collapsed giggling like fucking hyenas.   
“We didn’t though, maybe soon, I dunno,” Gerard stated a little smugly. I didn’t know what he was trying to do until I saw James haul himself to his feet and storm out the room. The action caused us all to halt awkwardly, well apart from Gerard who was, in fact, glaring after him.   
“What the actual fuck!” I snapped, breaking the silence which had accumulated amongst the group. I was sick, I was fucking sick and tired of the way he was acting. It was like he was trying to decatchect from me, disregarding me when I fucking needed him the most. I tried to be a good friend, I really fucking did, but he was expecting me to choose. Gerard had never liked James’ and I’s friendship, but he’d never acted like this about it.   
“James, don’t be a dick head!” Matt called after him as Kenny got to his feet to find him.  
“I’m fucking done, I don’t care anymore! I knew he had a fucking issue with me not being straight from the day I fucking told him!” I seethed, pulling myself out of Gerard’s embrace, the closeness suddenly feeling intoxicating. It wasn’t like I didn’t want to be near him, of course I did, I just was worried I might lash out at the wrong person if he was closest to me.   
“Frank, that’s not-“ Matt began before quickly being shushed by Harry.  
“No Harry!” Matt snapped, “he’s right this is ridiculous! He can’t just take it out on Frank all the time, they’ve done nothing wrong!”  
“What? Just fucking tell me! I’m sick of this conspiracy! Gerard?” I turned around and furiously glared at who I hoped would give me answers. He awkwardly looked at the floor, as if he had loyalties to the guy he hated the most, instead of me.  
“ _Gerard_!” I yelled at him.  
“Not mine to tell, Franks,” he shrugged awkwardly.  
“Fucking fine, well I’m going to find out myself.” I stormed out the room like James had done moments earlier to the garden where he and Kenny were gathered under an umbrella. He looked sad, and Kenny was comforting him as if I’d hurt him or something. The weather was atmospheric, the swirl of the evening fog setting in and the sky a muted lilac between the heavy, impending rain clouds. I had no shoes on, the wet grass squelching grotesquely under my socked feet but my anger was too possessive for me to give a shit in that moment. I knew everyone had followed me like young girls reading celebrity magazines; they just couldn’t resist the drama. There was going to be drama and there was going to be answers, even if it fucking killed me.  
“What is your fucking problem?” I said fiercely, causing James to snap his head up. His eyes were hollow and dark like the autumnal sky, and I didn’t think there was any love for me left in them. I hated arguments, but I wasn’t about to be walked over like that.  
“Frank, don’t.” Nathan said from behind me, “it’s Kenny’s party thing, don’t fuck it up.”  
“He already fucked it up, Nath!” I snapped defensively.  
“Just tell him, James!” Matt wisely suggested, “or this is going to turn into something ugly because the guy thinks you hate him.”  
“I don’t hate you, that’s the problem, Frank,” James muttered, everyone else's jaw hanging open in shock at his confession.  
“Then why are you acting all fucking jealous and weird?”  
“Because-“ he sighed but stopped for a few seconds.  
“Whatever, you can’t say I didn’t try,” I threw my hands up in defeat before turning to walk away. I was going to go home, I needed a fucking break.  
“Because I am jealous, Frank,” I heard him call from behind me, causing me to stop in my tracks in utter disbelief. “I love you.”  
“Wh-what?” I said, my gaze meeting Gerard’s instead of turning around to face his utterance. Gerard looked furious, he had the same look in his eye that a defensive lion had over their prey, his lip almost curling in anger. Gerard just shook his head at him, like giving him a non-verbal warning that I was not allowed to know.  
“I love you. I’ve liked you since we were like thirteen and I fell in love with you God knows when! He only fucking wanted you when he found that out,” James jumped to his feet, almost squaring up to Gerard. My blood ran cold, I had to be misunderstanding something. This wasn’t some fucking teen movie, how had I got myself into a love triangle when I had only just allowed myself to be loved? It appeared to be the truth though as Gerard stalked towards him, pushing him harshly, making him stumble backwards with his force. I had never seen Gerard fight before, let alone with my close friend, and I really didn’t fucking want to.  
“This isn’t about you! You fucking took him from me, remember? You just were too much of a pussy to do anything about it! Well, guess what, you lost James!”  
“You treat him like shit!” James screamed in his face pushing him back.  
“Hey!” Nathan ran between them, the others separating them whilst I blinked aimlessly. I felt a weird feeling creeping on my shoulders, like a poisonous closeness infiltrating my bloodstream. I loved James I just wasn’t in love with him, but it made me feel weird to know that he didn’t feel that way back. I had struggled so long with the concept of romance, throwing something else into the mix was like the straw that broke the camels back.   
“Gerard, come on,” I ran over to him and tangled my fingers messily in his own. He didn’t clutch me back, instead, all I got from him was heated, furious breaths. “Let’s go.”  
“No! Come on, guys, we need to talk about this!” Kenny pleaded, hurt in his eyes gathering like he was the one in the scandal.  
“Nah, I need fucking space,” I shook my head furiously, “come on, Gerard!” I was almost begging him, closing my other hand around our loosely joined fingers to drag him.  
“Fucking waste man,” he tutted at James who was frozen, finally letting me pull him to the double set of doors.

The walk home was not quite pleasant. He had snatched his fingers out of mine, instead choosing to run his hands through his hair. We had not said goodbye to anybody despite their pleas, we had just silently got our shoes on. I felt fucking guilty, it was no one's fault, but I had to get out of there before I either panicked to death or Gerard started something physical. Tensions were too high for the group to have congruent thoughts, and I needed space more than anybody. James couldn’t love me, he was straight! I needed him to see that it was probably just his tension with Gerard making him think like that for me, and he could do a million times better than somebody like me.   
“G,” I whined, struggling to keep up with him as he stalked off ahead.  
“It’s not you, bug. I promise it’s nothing to do with you,” he fumed, not slowing down.  
“Then what is it?” I almost ran after him.  
“He thinks I don’t deserve you. I fucking don’t, I already know that! He doesn’t need to remind me every time I just wanna be close to you! He’s been so jealous for so fucking long, making you feel guilty for something you can’t have even known about and I’m sick of it! I love you, you deserve better than me, _blah fucking blah_!”   
“G, don’t say that! Don’t let him let you believe that!” I said desperately because it just was not fucking true. Gerard did not belong on this planet, fuck, not even this galaxy. I wanted to get him far away from this place, where this awful, decrepit universe could not hurt him anymore.  
“Gerard!” I pulled on his hand, “you’re the only one that I fucking want!” I began kissing his cheek, making him stop finally stop walking.   
“Baby,” I pleaded once more, turning his face closer to mine, “I love you.”  
“I love you too,” he sighed giving into my kiss and melting into me.

——

We had finally managed to drag ourselves away from each other as the weather too harshly nipped at our thin clothing. Our emotions were mixed and vicious, like a turbulent flight that was still somehow high up in the air. However, as he put me to bed and slowly started to unwind with our kisses, I began to calm down a lot. It was selfish, but I had not thought of James much due to being preoccupied with everything, but now I couldn’t get him out of my head.  
“Gerard, how long have you known for?” I whispered into the darkness, holding his face so close to mine our lips were almost touching out of fear he would get angry again.  
“Like, since the first time I saw you together,” he replied, his voice shaky with his breathiness.   
“But-“  
“I knew before he did, Frank. He looked at you how I looked at you, and I didn’t like it! Like last year though, Matt apparently made some sort of joke about how close you two were and he just didn’t deny it.”  
“How do you know that?”  
“Matt told me a couple of months back because me and James got into an argument about you. I just asked him if he did like you, and it got out of hand.”  
“Why did you ask?” I frowned.  
“Because,” he sighed heavily, “I couldn’t stand to see you with him. If that’s what you want though, I’ll leave you alone. I just want you to be happy, I love you too much to stand in your way anymore.”  
“No! Don’t be fucking stupid! I love you, only you! I’ve only ever wanted you, G,” I trailed off, stroking his soft cheek in the darkness.   
“Can I ask you something?”  
“Yeah, of course.”  
“Do you only say that because I kissed you first and you’re just confusing your platonic love for romantic love, if that makes any sense.”  
“Fuck off!” I said a little too loudly, shocking us both. “I dunno what this is, I just know I want it and I’ve fucking wanted it for as long as I can remember.” I played down my feelings, still unsure of the territory.  
“Me too,” I felt him grin as he rushed forward to peck at my lips between smiles. I lost myself in his open mouth with tangled fingers in his hair that night, feeling us grow closer with every laboured, shuddered breath.


	39. I stumbled on a secret power, I found a way to be without you

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> hey, this chapter is short sorry it's kinda like a filler one leading up to the next few events hope thats okay :)

I woke up with a grotesque heaviness in my head, and I didn’t think it was as a result of my alarm despite the tintinnabulation it caused. I soon came to my senses a bit, feeling the dreaded scratchy feeling on my throat and the ever-growing pressure in my sinuses.  
“Morning,” Gerard almost grunted from next to me, surprisingly showing more enthusiasm than me about the looming Monday morning.  
“ _Erugh_ ,” I groaned, interrupting myself with a cough that would not have been out of place on a heavy smoker of fifty years.  
“Ew, are you sick again?” He said but contrasted his statement by stroking a stray hair out of my face and feeling my forehead with genuine concern. “Because, you kinda sound like this,” he held his own nose to add a nasal twist to his voice.  
“Fuck off,” I whined. “How is it fair I was hungover yesterday and sick today, man?”  
“Shouldn't have done blowback with Poppy to make me jealous then, should you?” He raised an eyebrow.  
“Huh?”  
“She put her mouth on yours and she had a cold like last week so, serves you fucking right for rubbing it in my face, dick brain!”  
“Then you shouldn’t have kissed Amber,” I stuck my middle finger up at him, and attempted to roll back over into the cosiness of my bed.   
“Touché,” he shrugged. “In all seriousness, is this just put on so you don’t have to face James?”  
“Does this sound like I’m putting it on?” I snapped but breathed out of my nose to show him just how blocked it was. I guess that was the perks of knowing the person you were in love with very well already, I could be as gross as I wanted. I didn’t have to hide the grim fact my nose was running, or the way my skin was pasty and sweaty because he had already seen it a million times before. His statement struck a new chord in me though, a fucking despondent minor chord that made my body feel even heavier. It wasn’t the raw irate feeling I had the night before, it was more like when you woke up from a bad dream. Except, this wasn’t a dream. My friendship group was in tatters, and it was all my fucking fault. How foolish could I have been to think the two main people in my life could coexist peacefully for my own pleasure? Now James thought he had feelings that he most definitely did not that left me uncomfortable and tense.   
“Nah, are you coming to school though? I don’t think you should, you’re like burning up,” he curled his body around mine, placing chaste kisses on my hot, fevered skin.   
“It’s just a cold, G,” I tried to shake off his worries, but kept his head next to mine by keeping him in an almost love-fuelled headlock.   
“You stay here and I’ll stay with you.”  
“No! You can’t miss anymore school!” I glared at him. He was unbelievably naturally intelligent, but all those skipped classes were adding up and making his mother concerned. It was getting to that time in the year that everybody was applying for Universities, but he still said he was undecided. I was worried he was going to give up on life, and I couldn’t just sit and watch that happen.  
“Fine, _Mom_ ,” he rolled his eyes, “but if I get done for knocking James back to the hole he crawled out of then you can take the blame.”

——

It took him a good while to actually leave me, which was making my mother raise her eyebrow. I think she found it almost strange that he was staying over almost every night when before it wasn’t even once a week, but I don’t think she had worked out why. Once she had finally left after an array of questions on my health, Gerard could finally kiss me goodbye. Well, by kiss, things almost got heated again despite my struggle to breathe, right up until Joe rang him 10 times in a row to pick him up.   
“I’ll- see- you- later,” he pecked my lips as he tried to leave, but I held onto his school tie to keep him in place.  
“I change my mind, just fail I don’t fucking care, as long as you’re with me,” I whined like a bitch. I guessed being ill apparently turned me into more of a clingy mess for him.  
“Well, Joe’s expecting me anytime soon and I’m already supposed to be there so, unfortunately, I can't.” He sighed. “Oh don’t pout at me, man! I’ll be back at 3ish.”  
“Okay, but, Gerard?”  
“Yeah, baby?”  
“Please, just don’t start something with James, yeah?”  
“I fucking knew you were still keeping your options open with him!”  
“Erm no!” I said quickly, “just, I feel weird about it, I need to think about things.”  
“Fine, but if he says something to me, I can’t fucking do that.”  
“Okay, but only if he starts it, I mean it!”  
“When have I ever let you down?” He tilted his head, kissed me one last time and left. If only he understood the weight of the question he had just asked me and if it had not been rhetorical, I could have given him a list.

——

I spent the day sleeping, and in between those fever infused dreams, came cluttered, infiltrating thoughts. I was probably a little delusional, and still high on emotional drive, but I could not keep my mind from switching between Gerard and James. It was Gerard, it had always been Gerard, so why the fuck was my mind overplaying scenarios with somebody else? I did not love James, I wished I fucking did, but I didn’t. The image of his hands running over my body in the same way that Gerard’s had made me feel weird like I had some kind of lump forming in the pit of my stomach. My thoughts raced between my slumber, and I’d given up on trying to decipher what they meant. The thought of being close to James, or even speaking to him right now made me feel fucking weird. I didn’t think I could do it. I was selfish, but I just couldn’t help it. I needed to be careful about what I wished for because all those nights I had wondered on what it was like to hurt someone like Gerard had hurt me had come to a head. I kind of knew now, and fuck, it wasn’t pleasant.

“Sorry,” I heard Gerard whisper softly as he woke me up with a warm kiss on my cheek.  
“Hmm,” I mumbled, pulling him into my blissful duvet haven I had passed out in all day.   
“Go back to sleep,” he shushed me, pulling me to lay on his chest. “I didn’t mean to wake you, I just wanted to kiss ya.”  
“It’s okay,” I groaned, burying my face in his smoky, detergent scented school jumper. “I need to get up anyway, or I won’t sleep tonight.”  
“Okay, well I got you this,” he handed me an ice cold isotonic drink and a bag of gummy strawberry sweets he knew I was obsessed with. The last person to buy me those was James, but they tasted so much sweeter coming from him.   
“Thanks!” I beamed, greedily gulping the drink to help with my sore throat. “How was it?”  
“Okay, Kenny was upset with me until I went and sat next to him in biology, then he was okay,” Gerard rolled his eyes.  
“What did Joe say about that?”  
“Nothing, just told him it was to do with something Maisie said.”  
“So, nothing else?”  
“Well, your friends obviously asked me where you were because your phone is off, isn’t it?”  
“James asked where I was?”  
“No, he kept his head down, didn’t even sit with the others.”  
“You didn’t start on him, did you?” I begged.  
“No! I told you that I wouldn’t. I’m not a monster, Frank, I just get protective, I dunno!”  
“Protective of what?”  
“Of you, doughnut! I don’t mean to come across as possessive and jealous but I can’t help it, I’m really sorry.”  
“Shut up, you know I like you like that,” I yawned, feeling the tiredness take over once again.

——-

“Baby,” he said shaking me awake. The lightning outside was becoming twilight, the warmness of the room being much more inviting to me.  
“Yeah?” I sighed, quickly wiping the dribble from my chin awkwardly.  
“I gotta go.”  
“Why?” I frowned, feeling the blistering headache set in with how much I had overslept.   
“I’m not going to lie to you, my friends are getting suspicious on why I keep hanging around you instead of them. I can’t lie about it because if my mom found out then she’d think I was doing something I shouldn’t. It sucks, I just gotta see them for a bit, is that okay?”  
“As much as I don’t really like them, you’re allowed to see your friends, G. I’m not one of those possessive girls, you don't have to worry about me.” I sighed, not really meaning what I was saying. Of course, I didn’t want to stop him from seeing his friends, I just hoped they were not going to coerce him into something dangerous.   
“That’s why you’re my number one! Plus, you don’t have to worry because Nathan is going to be there!”  
“Nathan?” I frowned.  
“Yep! He’s with us quite a lot now, you know.”  
“So weird, I always thought he was too chilled for that kind of shit,” I frowned, worrying that Nathan was going to stumble down the same dark path that Gerard did. Nathan was not him though, he was strong-minded and would not adopt Joe’s views just because of who he was. I didn’t mean to be rude about Gerard, it’s just Joe had seen the quiet art freak as malleable, someone who he could mould into a version of himself, but Nathan wasn’t like that. I think I was just overly paranoid, my friendship group wasn’t exactly congruent at the moment, each bump in the road filling me with dread.   
“Anyway, I gotta go, bug! I’ll see you soon I promise!”  
“When though?”  
“I don’t know,” he replied, honestly. “It’s risky, Frank.”  
“I know but-“  
“But I’ll text you, okay?” He pecked my nose.   
“Fine,” I grumbled.   
“Get some rest and stop looking at me like that! I’ll be okay, Franks, I’m always okay.”  
“If you say so,” I rolled my eyes but kissed him anyway. My blocked nose stopped the kiss deepening, my lack of breath making it impossible to cling on to the contact that I had been desperately craving. I was like a camel, I needed to store the affection like one would store water because I wasn’t sure when my next hit was going to come. 

——

And it didn’t fucking come for days. My cold progressed to actual flu meaning I couldn’t even go to football on Wednesday due to shaking uncontrollably through cold sweats and vomiting anything other than water that I tried to consume. I was feeling weak, and my whole body ached which only started to ease on Friday. I shouldn’t have gone to school, I was still infectious for a start but the sporadic texts and lack of contact from him was driving me crazy. He had barely checked up on me, not even dropping around for five minutes. I wasn’t crazy, I knew that it was dangerous for him to be around me and, there was no real excuse now I was ill, but it still hurt. If I wasn’t craving his affections, I was feeling awkward at the thought of James. Everyone had text me, except him. I was glad though because I wasn’t quite sure what to say to him or if I even wanted to say anything at all. 

“Baby, I don’t think you should go. You look really pale and you’ve still got a fever,” my mother frowned at me in the car on the way to school. Gerard had sent an almost blunt message saying he was running late and could not pick me up all week if I was to return as he was giving Joe a lift everyday. I didn’t think I could stomach the school bus without vomiting everywhere, so I was thankful that my mom had offered.   
“I need to, I’m a bit behind,” it wasn't exactly a lie. My exams were in the next few months and all I really knew was music and Sports, the whole Psychology and Biology thing was kind of lost on me at that moment. I was glad I hadn’t been at soccer, I couldn’t stand Grimshaw pestering me about the scholarship. I didn’t want to go, especially not now. I loved football like it was family, but there was something I loved more. Platonic love was nice and it made you feel warm, but there was nothing quite like the thrill of being lovesick.

I couldn’t think about being lovesick in that actual moment though, because all I felt was physically nauseous still.   
“Frank!” Kenny rushed over in our form period and threw his arms around me. “I thought you were faking, but you look terrible!”  
“Ah thanks, Ken,” I winced as he retracted his bone-crushing hug, almost leaving me stumbling with how weak I felt.  
“I bet Gerard thinks you still look beautiful though, even though you’re grey.”  
“You do realise that being with him like that hasn’t turned me into a thirteen-year-old girl, right?” I chuckled.  
“Yes, but it is just so romantic, Frank! Best friends turning into lovers, it’s a story that would match Jack and Rose, Noah and Allie, Romeo and-“  
“Harry and Louis?” I smirked to myself.  
“Who?” He frowned, not understanding the reference.   
“Nothin’,” I shook him off, enjoying my guilty little secret all to myself.   
“Frank, what are you smirking at? Tell me!” He whined but quickly halted as the classroom door opened. It did not long to see why as a sleep deprived looking James walked in, the dark circles ringing his eyes more sunken than usual. I knew he’d seen me, I saw the way his emerald coloured eyes quickly snapped off the linoleum long enough to scout my seat before quickly glaring at the floor again. His usual seat was next to me, but he took one at the front of the classroom instead.  
“He’s not sat with us all week, he’s pretty cut up,” Kenny sighed. “Maybe, you should just talk to him-“  
“No!” I quickly snapped, “why is it always my fucking responsibility to fix things? What about my fucking feelings for once? I don’t wanna fix him, Kenny, I want him to leave me the fuck alone!” I seethed, not really being sure of why I was so angry. It appeared Kenny felt the same as his eyes filled with a confused hurt, taking my shortness personally as usual.  
“That’s not fair, Frank. What if Gerard had reacted that way when you told him how you felt?”  
“It is not the same thing!” I said quickly, “stop getting fucking involved in my business, man, I feel like absolute shit and you are not helping!”  
He did not respond, instead just scowled at me and turned away to doodle in his notebook.  
“Ken, I’m sorry!” I sighed in frustration at his sensitivity. “Look, let’s not talk about that now, tell me about Maisie! Aren’t you going to see queen Demi tonight?” I toyed with him, tempting him with a discussion of one of his superficial, pop princesses. I didn’t give a fuck about Demi fucking Lovato, but I knew Kenny could not resist the topic. My expectations were met when his eyes lit up again as he started to ramble about his plans for the evening.

“Oi, fucker!” Matt grinned up at me, tomato soup and clumps of bread staining his teeth. I’d made it to break time without puking, but I could not promise to withhold the upchuck if I had to glance at Matt’s half-chewed food any longer.  
“Sup,” I nodded, sliding into the cool, blue plastic chair not liking how it was making my sensitive, flu-ridden skin almost ache with the contact. My head was hurting, my lungs felt like they were burning from restraining coughs and gags and my bones felt as if they had been thrown through a meat grinder. I couldn’t give up yet though, I hadn’t seen Gerard yet. I hadn’t texted him, I wanted to surprise him that I was here. As I looked over at his empty seat that he usually occupied, I only hoped that I had not wasted my time turning up today at all.   
“I feel like,” Matt continued, bread being grotesquely tossed around his mouth as he chewed and spoke, “you’re back in your emo phase.”  
“Huh?” I glared at him. My emo phase was not something I enjoyed talking about, and I thought had been buried long ago with the one direction phase. I had once dyed my hair that ridiculous blue-black colour, purposely drawn red rings around my eyes and wore clothes that looked like they were picked out by Blood on the fucking Dance Floor. I’d only done it because I knew that was what Gerard liked, we had only been fourteen but he had been the only one to appreciate my new look. I eventually grew out of the despondent lyrics and the overgrown bangs and time moved on, but there were some days I ached to be screaming Pumpkinhead with my art obsessed best friend at the tops of our lungs on the way home from school.   
“You look all pale and sickly, a bit like death,” he concluded after peering at me behind his milk bottle glasses.  
“Well, you can join me then,” I gave a melodramatic cough in his direction.  
“Fuck off!” He threw his hands up as if that would shelter him from the airborne bacteria I had dispensed, making us all laugh. I felt bad when I saw James look up from the other side of the room at our laughter, but not enough to invite him back over. It was weird to be away from him as I’d spoken to him almost every day since I was 13, only really bickering never arguing. Still, when the bell rang, I waited for him to exit the hall before I went to my music class.

The last lesson of the day was biology, fucking finally. I had dragged myself through today like one would have to wade their way through quicksand. I wanted nothing more than to curl up in bed watching shitty reruns of Gavin and Stacey, but there I fucking was, sat and ready to learn all about the powerhouse of the cell. If Gerard wasn’t even in today, I would have been almost furious. Almost, because I don’t think I could ever quite mean my anger at him. Still, I’d seen all of his friends so it was unlikely he would have skipped on his own. Even his waster friends like Dean had jobs to go to, surely he wasn’t spending the day by himself. I quickly got my answer as he slinked into the classroom, a baseball hat pulled tightly over his head as he slipped next to Joe.  
“Gerard, hat off!” Mrs Brown reprimanded him like she had done so many times before. I was nervous though because whenever he did things like that in class, it meant he was defensive. It was almost as if he used that stupid hat as a mask, hiding behind it so no one could see his anxieties. Except, he did not quite sound anxious, instead he was laughing with Joe at the teacher's disapproval. He looked up, meeting my eyes and looked confused as to why somebody who felt like actual trash was sat there.

We were doing another practical that lesson, something about cell division that I was letting Kenny take the lead on because of how ill I felt. It was almost painful how long Mrs Brown had droned on before setting us off on our task because I was just eager to talk to Gerard. I knew I could not approach him with Joe there, but I fucking missed him. It was ridiculous, it had only been like 4 days, but I was craving him and his touch. He had not bothered to text me much, but like I said, I understood.

What I fucking did not understand, however, on why he was being such a cunt. I had been resting my sorry head in my hands at the worktop, occasionally glancing over at him but feeling too dizzy to do anything about it. He stormed over to me, taking me by surprise by knocking my arm hard almost causing me to face plant the desk. Instead of being concerned at the way he had just made my head spin, he cruelly laughed.  
“The fuck was that for?” I groaned, our reunion not going quite the way that I had hoped. I wasn’t expecting him to pull me into an affectionate embrace and kiss me in front of everyone, but I also did not expect the malicious intent written all over his face. It was like the person from Monday was not the same rude, ignorant, chav stood tauntingly over me.  
“Dunno,” he shrugged. “Frank, why the fuck are you so short?”   
His comment was far from original, and he was hardly Peter Crouch himself, but it still made Joe snigger harshly. My height no longer bothered me, I had given up caring about something that I could not change. So, why the fuck did the comments sting so much coming from him? It was beyond petty, but he might as well have just stabbed me in the back, it would have felt the same.  
“Fuck off,” I snapped at him, my migraine not being tolerable of this facade he had on in front of Joe.  
“Ooo, don’t snap at me shorty!” He laughed harshly at me.   
“Gerard?” Kenny frowned.  
“Ken, can you just get me a pipette please?” I begged him. It was almost as if a crashing bus was coming towards us, and I was pushing Kenny out the way. I did not want someone so pure to see the harshness of Gerard that had not come out in a while, especially when he idolised him so much right now. “Quick!” I said a little forcefully as I saw Joe start to approach my table more from where he had been almost hiding behind Gerard.  
“Erh, okay,” he reluctantly agreed before asking Mrs Brown to be excused so he could go on the hunt for a tool we had no real use for.   
“Frank, I think you’re a fucking gimp, but even you have to admit it’s weird being friends with that dork!” Joe laughed cruelly as Kenny skipped, leaving the classroom. Gerard laughed too, making me almost vibrate in anger.  
“Fuck off! He’s not done fuck all to either of you!”  
“You’re bare defensive, yano?” Joe raised an eyebrow.  
“Yeah, that’s well gay, Frank!” Gerard sniggered as if he had not almost had sex with me the weekend that had just been.  
“Gerard,” I began but was cut off by him mocking my blocked nose, and not in the flirtatious way he had done on Monday.  
“Fucking fag,” Gerard tutted his teeth at me until I felt I could not physically take it. I got out of my seat and stormed past him, trying to swallow the lump in my throat that was forming. I didn’t fucking know that person, nor had I seen him be that dick head in a very long time. For a hot minute, I had been his favourite toy. I was like a brand new action figure that he had cared for, played with and carried everywhere until he was bored and he had thrown me away. Being Gerard’s favourite was fucking sweet, but it made the bitterness of the feeling when he threw you away that much worse. I was tired and ill, probably more melodramatic than usual, but I still felt the uneasy feeling of wetness on tired eyes. I was not going to cry over some stupid comments he would not have thought twice about, especially when they were charged with Joe’s second-hand hatred for the world. Still, I had to sit outside on the grass for a good 10 minutes before I calmed down enough to trust myself to stop furiously blinking back my emotions. I should have known his lack of contact meant that he was done with me. He had created me in a big fucking mess and left me in the middle of it; alone. I was so lost, I did not care that my school trousers were now covered in sludge from the field and that the cold breeze was not doing my flu any favours.

With my suppressed emotions, came an even worse kicking in my stomach. It triggered my nausea and I knew I could not hold back any longer as I ran to the bathroom to finally give in to my illness. I was far too sick to be embarrassed about the grotesque retching sound I was making, too lost in the bitter taste of stomach acid in my mouth from the lack of food I had consumed. I finally emerged from the toilets feeling sorry for myself, my fever soaked skin and pounding head giving me no release. As I finally went to walk out of the exit, the door slammed open making me stumble backward.  
“Oh, erh, sorry!” James squeaked, looking humiliated that he had just knocked me back. Before I could comprehend his rushed utterance or the hurt behind his eyes, he had already run out of the bathroom. I felt a pang in my heart as it physically hurt for him, and suddenly I realised he was not the scary monster I had made him out to be in my head all week. I was becoming consumed with guilt, Kenny’s words from this morning ringing shrilly in my head. I had made James feel like Gerard had just made me feel, and fuck, I hated myself for it.

I blinked at the space he had left for a while before deciding on my plan of action. I was going to claw my life back, without Gerard’s influence for once. 


	40. I spent my yesterday ducking your calls

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> I couldn't sleep so enjoy this short update
> 
> The song for this chapter is fallout by catfish and the bottlemen bcos the lyrics literally but unintentionally run parallel to the story if you wanted some music to fit the scene :D

About a year ago, Gerard had clung on to a concept called the butterfly effect. He usually did this, found some bullshit word or theory that resonated with him and briefly took the pain away by shifting the blame for his shitty past and lived to it as if it were a bible. The butterfly effect suggested that life was like a butterfly that flapped its wing, and one movement could create a whole ripple of events. He told me that if he had not gone with Joe that day like he had wanted to, then he would have still been an art freak who was ever so slightly overweight and I would have been better off without him. At the time, I’d told him to shut up, becoming bored with his ‘ _everything happens for a reason_ ’ prophesies. I thought, some things just fucking happen, and that they were shitty and that was just life but with the sadness, I found in my heart now, I suddenly understood why Gerard fell so deeply into those theories. When you were sad or numb, it was quite easy to become lost in your mind and to believe anything that even slightly eased the torment long enough to just be hopeful for a little. Maybe if Gerard had not gone that day, things would have been different. Maybe he would have been sat there with me if that fucking butterfly had just flapped its stupid wings just a moment later than it had all those years ago.

I rang the doorbell to what I felt was my doom. The fucking little button could have been surrounded by thorns, guarding it, like some modern-day Sleeping beauty. I wasn’t a noble prince though, I was a scared, lovesick fool. I pressed it hearing the juxtapositioning cheerful bell sing in the hallway, as I contemplated just running away. I was still feeling shitty, the taste of vomit still echoing in my mouth. The bus ride home had been borderline hellish, but I couldn’t stand to be sat in Gerard’s deathtrap of a car in that moment. Being close to him when he was like that was like being in the path of a sonic boom, just painful with how excruciatingly loud it was. No, for once, I was being my own butterfly.

“Frank,” James fumbled awkwardly at the door. I did not give him time to stumble over what to say anymore, instead, I pulled him into a bone-crushing embrace that even a hormonal Kenny could not have mustered. I clutched him closely, my hands wrapped around his head to keep him next to me. For a moment, he deliberated, but I soon felt his warm arms wrap back around me. We clutched at each other for so long, I was losing feeling in my arms with how tightly I was holding him, my feet dancing to get closer to him.  
“I’m fucking sorry, Jam,” I pulled back, platonically resting my forehead on his in a way I had done before. He was not to be feared, he was my second closest friend in the whole fucking world and I had been so fucking wrong to treat him so badly.  
“My fault,” he mumbled.  
“How is it your fault?”  
“I should have told you how I felt, maybe then it would have been me and you, and not you and him.”  
His comment left me feeling awkward. I wasn’t involved with Gerard because he had kissed me first, I was involved with him because despite him being a massive fucking prick, I loved him. If I did not love him so strongly, I wouldn’t have stuck around for so long. Loving James would have been the easy option, especially now with his confused feelings, but it just wasn’t what I felt in my heart.  
“James,” I retracted my embrace.  
“Look, come in, you look like shit, man,” he flashed me a melancholy smile. “Well, shit for someone who is so fucking beautiful.”

——-

“I dunno what to say,” I admitted as we sat on his tan leather couch awkwardly throwing glances back at each other.  
“Me neither,” he confessed, “I had this whole speech planned, and now it’s come to it, my mind is fucking blank.”  
“What kind of speech? Were you pissed at me?”  
“Nah, I was pissed off at him. Is that really news though?”  
“Well no, but what you said last week kinda changes things.”  
“Look, I don’t want it to change our friendship-“  
“Don’t be a doughnut, James! Anyway, I don’t think you actually feel like that, yano?”  
“No, don’t even start with that, Frank!” He snapped at me, taking me back a little with the forcefulness of his tone.  
“What?” I frowned.  
“Don’t sit there and patronise me! Who I like is my fucking choice, not even you can decide that, Frank! I like- no you wanna fucking know the truth? I love you, Frank, I fucking love you.”  
“And I love you too-“  
“No, you’re not getting it,” he groaned in frustration. “Has that absolute fuckwitt treated you that badly that you really believe you’re not capable of being loveable?”  
“I-“ I stuttered, but he was quick to add more.  
“You don’t see yourself how other people do! You’re always saying that you wish Gerard could see himself how you see him, but do you not think that about yourself? I think you’re perfect.”  
“Don’t say that,” I blushed. Whatever James had been smoking, I fucking wanted some. I wasn’t some dark Morrissey-type lost soul with social issues but always with something whimsical to say when given the chance, I was a loud-mouthed, facetious, basic white boy.  
“People want you, Frank, you just can’t look past those fucking moon eyes he gives you whenever he feels depressed and wants attention.” He added snidely.  
“You can hardly fucking talk, girls want you-“  
“ _Girls_ , Frank!” He shook his head, “if I liked girls, do you really think I would like you? I mean you’re pretty and all but like… you’re hardly androgynous are you?” He smirked, despite the sadness in his voice.  
“You… you’re gay?” I frowned.  
“I like boys, what are you confused about?” He tilted his head. I obviously did not have an issue with boys liking boys, fucking clearly, but it was odd to hear someone who you thought was so standard finally fighting against the current. Not to give into gender schemas, but James was a popular, soccer playing, brit pop-loving walking stereotype. I didn’t see how liking boys fit in with his lifestyle, but then again, maybe he thought the same about me. I wasn’t exactly flamboyant, but I was a little clingier, a little more emotional and a little more expressive than James was. Gerard was a different story, he could fuck girls all he wanted, but I was there throughout his David Bowie phase. James had always been James though, apart from maybe I had completely misunderstood who that was all along. His sexuality did not define him, but it was fucking weird to hear him confess that.  
“How long?”  
“How long have I liked boys or how long have I liked you?  
“Both, I dunno.”  
“I’ve always liked boys, Frank,” he rolled his eyes, “but I’ve liked you since middle school.”  
“I didn’t even know who you were in middle school!”  
“Yeah! You were always glued to Gerard’s side! Then you started coming to practice on your own and Grimshaw paired us together, I was fucking dying, man! You never really spoke to me before that, you always just quickly ran off to find Gerard.”  
“I didn’t mean to I just-“ I trailed off thinking of all those times I had been quick to escape into the art rooms, despite finding the subject dull.  
“You just felt about him how I felt about you, right?”  
“Did you know? Like, did you know I liked him?”  
“I think I always knew, I just hoped it wasn’t true.”  
“Sorry,” I mumbled, unsure of why I was really apologising.  
“Not your fault,” he shrugged, “besides, the only thing worse than you falling in love with Gerard Way would you being completely straight now, wouldn’t it? Then I really wouldn’t stand a chance.”  
“Fuck off,” I laughed, “how could someone with my haircut and a weird obsession with Alex Turner ever be completely straight?”  
“Don’t forget the Larry fanfiction. I don’t think a straight boys favourite pastime is reading One Direction smut.”  
“Shut up,” I groaned throwing a cushion at him.

Suddenly, I did not feel awkward around him anymore. I was flattered he thought of me as being worthy to love, despite him being delusional. Things had not changed between us, we were still as close as ever, if not closer. We invited Matt and Harry over to blast the new Catfish and the Bottlemen album, finally taking the chance to blast something that was not produced by Ariana Grande or Demi Lovato now Kenny was on his second date with Maisie. Nathan was not available either, but the others did not know he was probably with Joe again.

“ _I GIVE ALL MY LOVE TO ALL THE ONES WHO STUCK AROUND THE ONE'S I COUNTED ON WHEN I NEEDED TO GET OUT_ ,” I sang obnoxiously loudly into the camera Matt was shoving into my face, probably feeling the lyrics too much.

——-

“ _I pissed you off again so that you’d leave me alone in Leeds again_ ,” the speaker quietly blared from the corner of the room as things amongst us had settled down and the others had got into a quiet debate on whether all the new Catfish songs just sounded the same or not. I had rested my head on the sofa, feeling congested still, but with an almost full heart. James didn’t make the pain of missing Gerard stop completely, he just muted it enough for me to have tranquil thoughts for a bit. Seeing him get that purple vein pop in his forehead with the defensive passion he had for a now over commercialised band made me happy. He was too pure for this world, too innocent for a drain like me. I felt my phone buzz in my hand, for once I had not been checking it 24/7. I was shocked to see the message was from Gerard, and it was not one I had expected.

“ _But we just always seem to fall out when I’m most in need of it, and you just always seem to always just call out when I’m up for leaving it._ ”

**\- I’ve seen Matt’s Snapchat of you with James. How could you fuckin do that to me?**

The fucking audacity of him left me seething. James was my friend, his apparent feelings did not change that. I felt myself growing stronger, he couldn’t just control me like a fucking puppet. For the first time in my life, I ignored his text and defied his wished. I slipped the toxic device back into my pocket, ignoring the way my fingers itched to nibble at the bait he had laid out for me. He was a dick, and as I said, I was now my own butterfly; I decided my own fate.

“ _SEE I’M SORRY IF I DROVE, YOUR MATCHES TO MY CLOTHES!_ ” I burst out at the top of my sorry, cold-ridden lungs, taking James by surprise but making him flash me a warm smile none of the less.


	41. If I could be who you wanted all the time...

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> This is a long fluff filled load of ramble 
> 
> I know Mardy Bum is like the most overplayed AM song but if u don't know it and wanna know what he's singing; https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lp1fQ51YZMM
> 
>  
> 
> Also I don't know why Travie McCoy has randomly made and appearance but I love him

I stumbled home with the midnight sky being my only company. I still felt ill, but for once anxiety was not worsening my problems because things between me and James were fixed. I wasn’t stupid, I wasn’t going to sleep over like he’d asked me to because I’d made that mistake with Hannah and it had left me feeling shitty. Things with James were never romantic, and if he did feel that way (which I still was unsure about), then I wanted to treat him fairly. I would try and restrain myself from mauling him with hugs and platonic cheek kisses if it made it easier for him. I couldn’t believe the guy was gay, I mean, I don’t think anyone could. He obviously hadn’t told a lot of people, only our friends and Gerard really, but I was still unbelievably proud of him. Everyone expected James to end up with the girl next door, a whitewashed wedding and to pop out two equally well-achieving children; but that wasn’t my James. No wonder Gerard hated him so much, he was everything he didn’t have the fucking balls to be. 

I crept up the dimly lit stairs being careful to avoid the creaking floorboard next to my parent's room. As I successfully slipped into my room, my safe haven, I did not bother to turn the lights on immediately, taking the moment the bask in the tranquil peace that the darkness brought as I rested my clammy forehead on my bedroom door. I was not unfit, I trained twice a week, but my shitty unwell lungs meant I was out of breath from the walk home.   
“What fucking took you so long?” The voice from my bed said, scaring the absolute shit out of me.   
“Gerard?” I snapped, turning the lights on to try and still my hammering heart.   
“If you wanna avoid people, Frankie baby, you might wanna make sure they don’t have a key to your house,” he rolled his eyes, almost taunting me by dangling his key in front of my face. The teenage mutant ninja turtle pattern he insisted on having printed on it not seeming fitting for the severity of the situation.   
“Just get out, Gerard,” I sighed heavily.   
“Nah, I wanna know why you stormed away from me earlier, I was only fucking about! Plus, I did it because Joe was calling you my boyfriend and-“  
“And that’s disgusting, right?”  
“No! Don’t twist my fucking words. You know that if Joe ever found out about us then we’re both fucked, Frank!”  
“So what’s the point then? What’s the point in dragging this out if it has to be hidden?”  
“Because, now I know what you feel like to hold, what you taste like and what it feels like to be loved by you, I can’t just give that up,” he admitted. Normally, his poetic words would have made me grow weak, but despite my frail physical state, I was emotionally stronger than I had been for a long time. I was not his doormat, and I wasn’t just there as his dirty little secret. I knew I didn’t have as much to lose as Gerard did, but if he cared about me that much, he wouldn’t have been so quick to keep me in the dark like some childhood fear.   
“Just go, Gerard!”  
He sighed heavily and got to his feet, but of course, Gerard Way would never lie down and take something so easily. As he walked past me slowly, he started humming under his breath something he knew I could not resist. 

“ _But it’s right hard to remember that on a day like today when you’re all argumentative and you’ve got the face on_ ,” he almost whispered the words, smirking as he went.   
“Gerard, don’t!” I tried to fight the smile that was threatening to take over my face from the stern glare I was trying to give him.   
“ _Now then mardy bum, oh I’m in trouble again aren’t I? I thought as much_.” He sang a little stronger, backing me towards the door, stroking a hair out of my eyes. Despite the cringe-filled lyrics, I felt myself sigh at the husky smoothness to his voice only he could possess. Alex Turner himself could have been trying to serenade me with his words, and it still would have not made my stomach grow weak in the same way.   
“I hate you,” I smirked, leaning into his touch as we both knew he had succeeded in enticing me in. The Arctic Monkeys were like some aphrodisiac to me apparently as I practically mauled him to kiss me again. I had missed the softness of his lips, and it had only been 4 days. I did not waste time, I just opened my mouth and immediately moved my tongue against his own, not wanting to pussyfoot around the action.   
“But you love me,” he said into my open mouth. 

We kissed for a little while until my lack of breath won. I pulled back and rested my forehead on his own and took the moment to bask in his eye contact. He was holding my waist loosely, placing pecks on my nose and simply admiring me as if I deserved it. It was only when his eyes danced over my face, that I saw just how blown out his pupils were. It was the type of darkness they had that could never be caused by passion alone, no, there was something I was missing.   
“Are you high?” I said in a monotonous voice, feeling that anger I thought had drowned resurface with an even more vicious head. I had got my fix of him long enough to be strong again, and fuck, I was going to be stronger this time.   
“No,” he said but could not fight a slight grin on his thin lips. It was only then that I realised how his words were slightly slurring and his breath had the very faint hue of whiskey.  
“Get out.” I snapped bluntly.  
“Frankie-“  
“Get the fuck away from me, Gerard!” I screeched in his face, feeling nothing but harrowing disappointment. He was only here because he was fucked up, yet again I came second best to a bag full of chemicals and a bottle full of problems.  
“Why are you suddenly arsed about this? I do coke all the time!”  
I knew he did. I knew that in my heart, it would always be his first love. It was too much in his bloodstream and neurochemistry for someone as insignificant as me to tear it away from his desperate hands. I had grown a little hopeful that I had been enough because he hadn’t done it in a while, well, if you disregarded the times at parties. I wasn’t enough though, I would never be enough for him.  
“Get the fuck out!” I yelled at him now, not feeling phased my parents were only in the room below me.  
“Baby, don’t-“  
“Don’t fucking call me baby,” I shook my head and tore myself out of his grip.  
“Fine,” he shrugged. I was disappointed at his lack of reaction, but I think I was angry enough for the two of us. It was not the first time he was high, so I did not know why I was suddenly so irate. I think I’d just finally had enough, for the first time in my life.  
“I knew James was gonna fucking change your mind about me,” he muttered under his breath as he stormed out of the room. Half of me wanted to chase after him and beg for his love, like fucking muscle memory. I wasn’t about to do that though. His words weren’t even true, my mind would never change about Gerard. The only thing that was changing was my fucking self-respect.

I found it difficult to sleep that night. My phone was calling to me as if I were a sailor and his stupid little ringtone I had saved was a siren. I wasn’t going to go crashing towards the rocks to be drowned though, I could self-sabotage all by myself without Gerard’s help. Despite it being a cold night, my remaining fever was making my body sticky and anxious to the point I had given up on sleep after flitting between restless stages, I rose before my alarm for soccer even went off.

I was perhaps a little too ill to attend practice, but we had our first game coming up soon for this tournament and I also needed to get my aggression out. I thought I would wake up feeling better, but I was more pissed off than before. That stupid coke stained smirk on his face flashing behind my eyes. If it were not so beautiful, I would have hated it. I could not sit still. As I sat down trying to force a coffee down my sorry throat, my legs were vibrating with emotion. I wasn’t even sure what I was feeling, all I knew is that I needed space from him. He had made me feel worthless, and I was fucking sick of it. Being insecure about yourself was not a good enough reason to put other people on the same level. I knew it was probably optimistic saying that I was done with him completely, but that's what it felt like. He was never going to change back to the boy I fell in love with, and the bad times were now starting to outweigh the good. I was finally becoming stronger, I just had to try and stop my mind from wandering to the way his lips felt pressed against my body.

“ _Baby, give your heart a break,_ ” Kenny sang loudly and out of tune as he laced up his boots, desperate for one of us to ask how his date went. I had perhaps tortured him enough with my silence, but I was not in the mood to really hear his cute stories of the night before. I had quite liked Gerard and I’s X rated friendship, but I couldn’t help but almost wish we were more like Kenny and Maisie. Things were going well for him, I could tell that much by the smile on his freckle covered face. I didn’t understand how Gerard knew a girl like Maisie, she sounded too innocent to be true, but I was glad that he did. Maybe all the things that Kenny liked weren’t so uncool if you were a girl.  
“Go on then, Ken, spill the goss,” Harry rolled his eyes at our eager friend.  
“Did you fuck her?” Matt asked.  
“No!” Kenny replied, horrified at Matt’s crudeness. “She kissed me on the cheek when we left!” The guy was almost giddy with the possibility of love, even at something as chaste as a kiss on the cheek.  
“Not a kiss on the cheek, you absolute slut!” Matt said sarcastically. “You better not have shown her your ankle, young man!”  
“Leave him alone, Matty,” James threw his arm protectively around a pink looking Kenny. “My boys in love!”  
“Not love!” Kenny blushed, “but I think that I really like her!”  
“Don’t get your hopes up, bro, love fucking sucks,” I rolled my eyes.  
“Oh who’s pissed in your cynical little bowl of cornflakes this morning, Frankie my darling?” Matt smirked.  
“Is this about what Gerard did yesterday, Frank?” Kenny asked.  
“What did he do yesterday?” The others pestered me for an answer, apart from James, who was just sat there smugly.  
“Nothing!” I grunted, “now are we gonna play, or are we gonna listen to Kenny sing shit pop songs all day?”

I missed that feeling of a ball under my feet, the wind in my hair and that cohesiveness in my friendship group. We were one again. Kenny had moved on from singing Demi Lovato and had suddenly remembered it was November and he had not yet sung one Christmas song. After practice, I had almost forgotten my troubles as he began singing All I Want for Christmas is you, and almost everyone joined in. Even Toby started singing, despite him being usually irate with all of us ever since Gerard took Jess from him and ditched her just because he could. I was not singing some shit Christmas song when I felt that pissy, but I still let James jump all over me as if he was turning Mariah Carey into some sort of private mosh pit song. Slowly, everyone disappeared apart from my friends and Grimshaw who were caught in a deep discussion about Juergen Klopp’s potential signing mistakes for this season.  
“Frank,” Kenny hissed at me.  
“One sec!” I said quickly and continued to the group. “But I just don’t think he should have let Camacho go-“  
“Frank!” He hissed again, interrupting me for the second time.  
“What?” I snapped, but soon understood why he was so desperate to steal my attention away from everyone. There stalking towards me was a guilty looking Gerard. I had done well to ignore him, purposely turning my phone off and leaving it at home so I could focus solely on the one thing in the world that mattered to me at that moment; football.  
“Fuck this,” I said quickly getting to my feet and began walking away.  
“Frank, don’t,” I heard him call, his steps getting quicker to match me. Despite my furious, venomous look on my face, he attempted to step in front of me, but I was more nimble than he was. I ducked under his arm and walked quickly away from him.  
“Listen to me!” He begged, but seeing him again just ignited that anger in me. I was so angry because I loved him that much harder, his beautiful face just like Medusa if I looked at it, I would crumble to stone and he would win. I felt him grab my arm harshly, and as I tried to rip it out of his grip, he shocked me by smashing his lips on to my own. I resisted him for about 0.5 seconds before the warmness of him was too enticing as it melted away all my upset and hurt. The feeling of his strong hands on my waist as he moved his lips against mine made my knees grow weaker, as I threaded my fingers in his hair to kiss me harder. For a moment, we were not in the open air, in danger of being caught by anyone, we were in our own private world. He knew what to do to make me fall for him all over again, and with the reminder of how he could touch me, I didn’t seem to mind. He pulled back slightly, his lips wet and red with the passion he had just kissed me with, and rested his forehead on my own. His strong stare looked deeply into my eyes and down at my lips as he seemed to not to be able to resist pecking my lips again.  
“I’m sorry, I was a dick head and I’m really sorry,” he mumbled. The words alone were enough because Gerard never apologised anymore. When he was younger, he had developed a habit with his anxiety that meant he said sorry every five seconds for things that weren’t even his fault. It broke my heart once, a guy pushed him in the corridor in middle school, and he apologised for it. Things changed though, the bitterness of those memories had made him unapologetic and like he always said, if people let him hurt them, it was their fault. As I thought deeply, just falling more in love with him and his intoxicating words, he took my silence for displeasure.  
“I know this isn’t an excuse, but I was feeling anxious and Joe was just pissing me off, man! He was saying stuff that’s true but I’m just not ready for him to know, okay? I wish I was like you, you’ve always been so sure of who you are, but I’m not and I just need time! Please don’t be mad with me, I won’t go out tonight, I won’t touch coke when I’m with you, please just don’t be mad at me!”  
Instead of finding words that were worthy of matching his own, I kissed him again.  
“ _Oi, Oi_ ,” I heard Matt holler from the benches as the reality of what we had just done came crashing down on me. He had just claimed himself not to be ready to disclose our secret, but he had to have seen my father’s childhood friend sat there in his bright red coaching jacket.  
“Shit,” I pulled back from him, finally withdrawing enough from the moment to realise Grimshaw had just seen everything.  
“Frank, it’s okay!” He said quickly, but the shakiness to his voice did not match.  
“I just need to-“ I did not finish my utterance, because I had no fucking clue what I was going to do, I just walked over sheepishly to Grimshaw, Gerard following awkwardly a few steps behind me.

“Well,” Grimshaw said, just as fumbled as Gerard and I, “now it makes a bit more sense to me why you two have always been that close.”  
“Coach, I-“ I stumbled, feeling my cheeks flush hot and red. Outside of practice hours, I never referred to Grimshaw as coach, the formality of it was strange, but it felt appropriate.  
“I mean, your private life is private, Frank,” he nodded awkwardly. I knew he did not know what to say to me, because he thought Gerard was a bad influence for a start. As well as that, I had grown up with the man being a sort of uncle figure to me, I couldn’t believe I had been as stupid as to fall into Gerard in front of him. Gerard had also just claimed he did not want people to know about us yet, so why the fuck had he kissed me when he could clearly see Grimshaw?  
“Please don’t tell my dad,” I said, my voice high and panicked. My father was going to the pub tonight with his group of friends, and it was inevitable that Grimshaw was going to be there. I suddenly felt my heart leap into my throat, so much so that my worries from before about Gerard and James completely abandoned my mind. I had always known I was not so straight, but I had never fucking told my parents that. I was not ashamed, and I knew they would not be totally judgemental, but I still panicked. I wasn’t ready to tell them, I wasn’t even fucking sure what to tell them, for a start.  
“Your business is yours to tell your father, Frank.” He nodded at me, lips pursed but his promise hot on the tip of his tongue.  
“Please,” I added weakly.  
“I promise! Just, promise me in return to be careful,” he eyed up Gerard from behind me, unsure of his intentions.  
“I will.”  
“Right, I’ll leave you boys to it, I’m sure you erh… have a few things to talk about without me hearing,” Grimshaw got to his feet awkwardly, hauled the bag of balls over his shoulder and walked towards his car.

——

“Frank, he said it was fine!” Gerard tried to reassure me as I paced in my room over and over. I was so wound up, I didn’t even try and comfort James after he sulked off after practice, despite knowing I had accidentally rubbed it in his face. Gerard didn’t seem to care though, he was tossing a bouncy ball against my wall whilst lying on my bed, catching it and then throwing it again.  
“I don’t understand why you aren’t more worried about this!” I stressed at him, my hands running wildly through my hair and voice coming out in a strangled octave.  
“Because, even if he broke his promise, my mom and dad are not who I’m scared of finding out about us.”  
“I know what you’re saying, but do you not think they’ll think it’s weird?”  
“Dunno, my moms heard me have sex before though it’s not like-“  
“Not with me though!” I fretted. “Plus, your mom might know you’re a fucking whore, but I’m not like that!”  
“Okay, first of all, ouch. Second of all, I don’t care what they say, I nearly lost you today and it fucking sucked. I don’t regret what I did because if I hadn’t have done it, you would still be pissed at me probably crying on James’ shoulder somewhere!”  
“Read my fucking lips, I. Do. Not. Like. James!” I snapped at him.  
“He likes you though! Did you not see him storm off when he realised we weren’t fighting anymore?”  
“Of course I saw! I was just slightly more worried about the fact my dad’s best friend had just seen me kiss my best friend!”  
“Trust me, baby, that man needs to keep you sweet because, without you, that team is shit. He ain’t telling no one.”  
“But-“  
“I told you,” he finally stopped throwing that stupid ball at the wall and dragged me towards the bed, “he is not going to be breathing a word, he loves you too much.”  
“I dunno…” I finally gave into his affections, falling on top of his frame.  
“Why do you think the guy doesn’t like me? He thinks I’m going to corrupt you. This isn’t about football, it’s about him loving you like his own child. Before, he thought we were friends and that I was going to drag you down with me but now he’s like one of those crazy dads who knows their daughters off with a bad boy,” he smirked.  
“I am not a lovesick girl,” I grumbled.  
“Nah, just a lovesick stubborn fucker,” he hummed happily, kissing me hard.

I definitely found it a little easier to forget my troubles when I had his tender lips working against my skin. Due to our slight disagreement and my illness, we had not touched each other much recently. It may have been a short time, but it felt like a fucking lifetime. The brief kiss he had given to me quickly progressed into something less chaste, and he was in the middle of kissing down my ear to my chest. In desperation, my shirt had quickly been discarded of, my body eager for him to go lower. He was using his palm to feel me through my pyjama bottoms I had not bothered to change after my shower, and they were quick to give away all of my secrets of desire for him. I gripped at his muscular shoulders through his grey sweater as he moved against me, sucking and biting on my collar bone. He grazed his teeth over a spot he had just nipped particularly hard, making my breath hitch in my throat. At the same moment he finally gave in to my pleas and dipped his fingers under my waistband, there was a knock at my door. I pushed him off me quickly, scrambling for my discarded shirt I had lost hopelessly.  
“Frank?” I heard my mother call from the hall.  
“Yeah?” I squeaked, which she obviously took as a cue to come in.  
“What are you doing?” She stared at me and the way I was sprawled still shirtless on my bed on my stomach to hide any telltale signs of my body. Obviously, my mother cock blocking me was killing off my boner quickly, but I had just panicked and got into the first position I could think of.  
“His shoulder hurt,” Gerard said quickly, but cooly. “I was trying to give him a sports massage but the little baby couldn’t handle me pushing down on the muscle that hurt!” He was such a good fucking liar, I almost believed him.  
“I did wonder why you were shirtless when it’s freezing up here!” She wrapped her hand-made knitted cardigan around her more to prove her point. “Well, Grimshaw is coming over to pick your dad up any second, why don’t you get him to have a look?”  
“Honestly, it’s fine,” I mumbled.  
“Why won’t you get up then?” She frowned at me. I was not getting up, because I had not yet had the chance to inspect if he had left any bruises or bite marks on me and I did not have any explanations for them if she asked.  
“Just hurting,” I lied.  
“Well, come downstairs then and we’ll ask him!”  
“Okay,” I reluctantly agreed.  
“Anyway, Gerard, I came to ask did you wanted any dinner?”  
“Erh, I’m okay thanks!” He said quickly, “I gotta drop Mikey off at his friend's house party or something.”  
“How cute! How is he getting on? I haven’t seen him in a long time!”  
“Yeah, he’s really good thanks,” Gerard said nonchalantly as if he hadn’t been whispering what he wanted to do to me only moments before that with that same tongue. “I’ll tell him to stop being rude and come by soon!”  
“Don’t fret about it! Young boys will be boys, won’t they?”  
“Ha, yeah,” Gerard agreed. He had taken that whole ‘boys can do whatever they want, and blame it on their increased testosterone in puberty’ thing to a next level when he had been growing up, but I think my mother still thought of him as responsible. My mom had a soft spot for Gerard, refusing to acknowledge he did any wrong at all. Maybe, it was a family thing to be a sucker for him and his well thought out words.  
“Right, Frank, I’m putting on the pasta now but come down when you’re ready!”

“Shit,” I cursed when she left, “does the universe just want us to be caught today or something?”  
“Maybe, but I genuinely thinks she thinks your shoulders just fucked. I mean, you’re always hurting yourself!”  
“Hopefully, but how am I gonna look Grimshaw in the eye?” I fretted.  
“Dunno, but you’re on your own! I gotta drop Mikey and Pete to some kid's house.”  
“Can they not get the bus like we used to have to? This is your mess too!”  
“Nah, my mom asked me to take them in return for her not grounding me.”  
“Why would she ground you?”  
“Found my lighter in my school blazer,” he shrugged. Honestly, a lighter was the least of her worries with her son, but I think she still thought he was somewhat responsible. I was glad she punished him for something as small as a lighter, it was perhaps the only thing that held him back a little. The thought of facing Grimshaw without Gerard for moral support felt daunting, but living another week without him if he was punished for the lighter seemed worse.  
“Don’t give me those moon eyes, you’ll be fine!” He rolled his eyes and kissed my forehead messily.

I walked downstairs as if I was walking down the aisle at a fucking funeral, but that’s what it felt like. If it were not for Gerard pushing me to go faster, I perhaps would have found it difficult to move my feet at all. As Gerard went to leave, Grimshaw rang the doorbell. As he walked in, he eyed Gerard up and down cautiously, as if he could ever understand the complexities of someone who probably didn’t even understand themselves. Gerard seemed unbothered, he just smiled a sickly sweet grin at Grimshaw before excusing himself for his awaiting brother.  
“See you guys later!” He said in a cheery manner, waving eagerly before strolling to his parked car outside of my house.  
“Frank,” Grimshaw began but was quickly silenced by my mother rushing in to take his coat.  
“Tom will be down in a minute,” she beamed at him, “come take a seat!”

My mother lead us into the living room, him choosing to sit right next to me on the sofa despite there being an array of other seats.  
“Frank said he hurt his shoulder, are you alright to look at it?” My mother asked.  
“I’m fine!” I protested, “it’s really better now!”  
“You couldn’t move it 10 minutes ago! Did the massage Gerard do help then?”  
“Yes,” I squeaked and Grimshaw coughed uncomfortably.  
“Anyway, tell him about it, Frank! I’m sorry I’ve got to just check on the dinner!” She quickly excused herself as we all heard the timer from the kitchen go off.

“Your shoulder?” Grimshaw finally said after the uncomfortable silence between us became too fucking loud.  
“Yeah,” I circled it around to add emphasis, “I think Nathan might have pulled on my shoulder earlier when he tackled me.”  
“Don’t lie, your shoulder was not hurting when Gerard was pulling on your arm earlier.”  
“Erm,” I scrunched up my face with anxiety.  
“I’ve been thinking about what to say to you all day, Frank. You’re in charge of your own life, aren’t you? I’m not going to tell you what to do, I just hope that you also don’t let Gerard dictate you.”  
“What is that supposed to mean?” I frowned.  
“The scholarship. I get you think you might love him or whatever, but you’re seventeen.”  
I scoffed at him, he didn’t know anything. I wanted nothing more than to snap at him that he knew nothing, he was a divorced bachelor pushing 51 who was bitter about love and family lifestyles. I was not that cruel though, life had been unkind enough, he did not need me to remind him. Grimshaw had been married once, but I didn’t remember much about my ‘auntie’ Jane. They had divorced when I was too young to understand why, but as I got older my parents slipped bits of information to me. From what I gathered, they had tried for a baby for years but when the doctors said that not even IVF was possible, she had started an affair to comfort herself with some guy from her work and had ended up getting pregnant naturally with him which had lead to a messy ending. I felt bad for Grimshaw, I really did, because I don’t think he ever learnt to trust love again. I knew that now he knew Gerard and I’s relationship was not quite so innocent, he was going to be even more irate about it, but he knew nothing about us. I’m sure if Jane had not have left him the way that she did, he would be more empathetic as to why I didn’t want to uproot my life and move countries for the sake of football. I loved football, but it wasn’t Gerard.  
“I just don’t wanna go!” I hissed, not wanting my mother to hear.  
“They keep asking me about you, Frank!”  
“They can ask all they want, I’m going to Manchester not Milan.”  
“Frank! You cannot waste an opportunity like that to go to a city that is twenty minutes down the road! Do you think for one second he would do the same for you?”  
“You don’t know him like I do! If he knew about this, he’d be begging me to go to Italy!” It wasn’t a lie, there had been a reason why I hadn’t told Gerard the complete truth. If I told him just how important the scholarship was, he would have insisted I left him, but I just couldn’t do that. I was happy with a boring, adequate life, just so long as he was by my side. This life would always be enough for me, as long as he was loving me.  
“Then why aren’t you going?”  
“It’s your dream, not mine!”  
“It is your dream though,” he said staring at me intently. “I just don’t want to see you get hurt and throw this away from someone who I don’t think is deserving of you.”  
“Like I said,” I replied sharply, “you don’t know him like I do. Thanks for your concern, but things are finally going good between us!”  
“Fine,” he said in defeat, “but I’m not giving up on you, Frank. You know I care about you too much.”  
“I know,” my voice softening as I saw it was worry littering his face, not anger. “I’m grateful for you, honestly, I just-“  
I was saved by my father coming back into the room, his strong aftershave flooding the living room and causing an abrupt end to our heart to heart.  
“Sammy, how are you, my good man?” My father beamed down at his best friend.

I got caught up in a conversation I could not escape from with my parents and Grimshaw. The topic had been pretty typical, discussing me when I was younger, and all those embarrassing stories. My mother was quick to mention Gerard though, stars dancing behind her eyes as she thought back to the boy who was not her own, but she loved as if he was. My mom had always been protective over Gerard because of his past, she was fiercely defensive of his actions like she was of mine but it also meant she was quick to gush about our achievements.  
“I remember that time you and G were playing in that first ever tournament, he cried the whole time!” My mother remembered fondly at the young boy clinging to her leg in fear because his own mother had to be called into work on an important case.  
“He should have pushed himself more, I think he would have been a good right back with those long legs,” my father added.  
“I tried to push the guy, Tom, I just wished I had tried harder because maybe then he wouldn’t have gone down the path he went down,” Grimshaw shot me a sideways glance as if it was his way of warning me of Gerard’s lifestyle I already knew about.  
“He’s a good kid, Sam,” my father said. “Life’s just been unkind to him, I don’t particularly blame him for doing some of the stuff he does.”  
“He doesn’t do anything that is bad!” My mother said defensively. “He’s been the best friend that I could have wished my baby boy to have.”  
“You had me worried when you were younger, Frank,” my dad laughed. “Remember when you told me you wanted to marry him? I almost believed you for a second, and you were only 6!”  
“Dad!” I blushed. He did not mean to be close-minded, I knew that he had just grown up in a very heterosexual, masculine society of men who did not fall in love with their best friends. His words did not have meaning behind them, but they still freaked me out.  
“Stop winding him up, Tom!” Grimshaw said quickly. “Now please, can I get a God Damn pint down my neck!”

I had a nice dinner with just me and my mom, but it was made even nicer when Gerard returned quicker than I thought. He sat and cradled a cappuccino from my mothers expensive coffee machine, joining in the reminiscing of our childhood.  
“It brings it all back you know, you dropping Mikey off!” My mother grinned at Gerard, sipping at her red wine.  
“I did not go to cool parties when I was thirteen! I spent the whole time drawing and listening to music,” Gerard visibly cringed.  
“You did! Remember, James had that party for his thirteenth! It was scary dropping you boys off there, I didn’t really know him well and I was just a little overprotective!”  
The party she was referring to was when I had first become friends with James and I had begged my mother to go to see all my new team mates. Gerard had not wanted to come, but I had forced him and instantly regretted it. He sat and sulked in a fucking Iron Maiden T-shirt in the corner, his over-dyed black hair covering his face from any potential conversations or new friends. He had not spoken to me for a few days after that, but had not told me why. I knew he was hurt I had spent the party socialising instead of cowering with him, but he had completely shut me off with anxiety. I should have handled it better, but I was young and selfish. It was at that time I was just coming to term with my feelings for him, and I was finding it difficult to be around him without my mind racing. I shut my homoerotic young thoughts up by diving into my new friends without consideration for him, and maybe that was where I went wrong. Maybe I had shut him out when I was younger because I was in love with him and couldn’t handle it, but I was over that now, and now all I wanted was him.  
“I’m nervous,” Gerard said quickly, in an attempt to change the conversation away from his troubled past. “I know he’s got alcohol in his bag, not that he told me.”  
“Gerard, it’s a fourteenth birthday party he’s not going to one of Joe’s house parties is he?”  
“No, but that’s how it starts, Frank!” He said, careful to not give my mother any more information about how he spent his Friday nights.  
“He’ll be fine, G!” My mother reassured him.  
“He better be!”  
“When did you turn protective?” I frowned.  
“I’ve always been protective over him! He just doesn’t know it. My mom never said I had to pick him up again, but I’m going to just in case.”  
“So sweet!” My mom ruffled his hair, something he did not usually like unless it was her, me or his own mother.  
“Where is he anyway?”  
“I dunno, some guy called Travie. I think I know how brother, and if it’s who I think it is, then it makes me more worried!”  
“Don’t think about it, come on let’s go and watch a film,” my mom said getting up from the table and clearing mine and her own plates away. “It’s been a while since I’ve had a Saturday night in with my boys!”  
She was so excited with the prospect of being with us both that I did not have the heart to wish to be alone with Gerard. I had waited for him for seventeen years, I could last one more night. Gerard didn’t seem to mind though, he just helped clear away the cutlery, despite not having used any.  
“Sure, but no romance films!” He giggled.

Gerard was outnumbered by me and my mother as we put on the notebook. It was not expected of me, but I loved films like that, as did my mother. He didn’t seem to mind though, he just tossed his arm around my shoulder as I cosied into him. The action was perhaps a little out of character to my mother, but I needed to be close to him in that moment. She didn’t say anything though, just snuffled from the other couch with the developing romance on the screen.

I shot awake to the sound of Gerard’s phone vibrating as I realised I had been dribbling on him and probably snoring with my still partially blocked nose.  
“Erh sorry,” I blushed looking up at him, as he just smiled down at me. My mom had been so wrapped up in the film, I didn’t think she’d even noticed that I had fallen asleep on my best friend and had only looked over with the noise of the ringtone disrupting the final scenes.  
“It’s Mikey, I should get this,” he nodded at us both before retracting his arm and exiting the room.  
“Nice sleep?” My mother raised her eyebrow once Gerard had left.  
“Yes,” I blushed, clearing my throat out of awkwardness that she had apparently just seen me sprawl all over him.

“Franks, I’m gonna have to go,” Gerard came back into the living room after some time, obviously stressed.  
“What’s up?” I frowned.  
“Oh, the parties over,” Gerard said in a strained voice, his eyes suggesting it was not the whole story.  
“Okay, well I’ll come with you!” I said getting up.  
“You’re still not very well, Frank!” He protested, “you have an early night and I’ll see you tomorrow!”  
“No!” I said, “mom, I’ll stay at Gerard’s tonight.”  
“Okay sweetie,” she smiled, not dragging her eyes away from the screen. “Be safe, love you!”  
“Love ya too,” I said quickly and pushed Gerard out the room.  
“What’s really wrong?”  
“Pete,” he sighed heavily.  
“Huh?”  
“Mikey just rang me in a panic because Pete is passed out, I just didn’t want to say that in front of your mom because I didn’t want her to spill to my mom.”

He was making out he was not worried for the young boy who he saw himself in, but I saw how tense he was as he began to drive.  
“Are you okay?” I finally broke the silence, squeezing his leg through his jeans as he sped up even quicker.  
“Fine,” he replied a little coldly, but momentarily took his hand off the gear stick long enough to squeeze my hand back.  
“What are you so worked up about?” I quizzed him, not letting his anxiety escape me again. I had let him face his demons on his own one too many times before, and I wasn’t about to do that again. The worrying line on his forehead suggested to me that he was far from okay, and I really had no idea as to why. It was not his brother who was paralytic, and even then, I wouldn’t have expected him to have this response.  
“I’m not worked up, I just… I dunno what to do, Frank,” he confessed. “He’s my baby brother, man!”  
“Mikey’s fine! It’s Pete!”  
“Yeah, that makes it worse, it makes my heart hurt!”  
“You said you thought the kid was annoying and weird like the other month! He’s just drank too much, he’ll be fine!”  
“I dunno, I just have this feeling in my chest like right here,” he gestured to his heart.  
“Are you telling me the emotionally unavailable Gerard Way may finally be feeling empathy for the first time in years?” I said, my voice dripping with sarcasm.  
“Empathy?” He raised his eyebrow, “you mean sympathy, right?”  
“Nah, I know you’ve seen that over-dyed black hair and desire to be different somewhere before, because I know I have.”  
“What the fuck are you trying to say?”  
“Pete is you!”  
“Well, maybe if someone had been there for me the first time I drank too much, I wouldn’t feel this freaked out!” He was becoming more irate to a memory I did not know.  
“Gerard?” I frowned.  
“What?”  
“Tell me!”  
“Nah, you don’t need more of a reason to hate my friends!”  
“Oh trust me, I hate them enough! Now tell me!”  
“It’s not that deep, Frank. I just drank too much when I was too young to be drinking, yano? It’s character development though!”  
“How is it character development? I don’t even understand what you’re saying they did!”  
“I drank too much, they left me on the park, happy?”  
“Gerard!” I said the heartbreak heavy in my voice thinking of that boy that was so easily manipulated. “Why didn’t you call me?”  
“You were off with James, I was upset about it, I drank too much and alas, I ended up passed out on a park all night, alone.”  
“Gerard!” I said again, unsure of how to reply to that. I fucking hated his friends, any warmness I had felt towards them in the past month quickly vanishing.  
“I don’t think you realise how hard it was feeling how I felt about you, without really understanding it myself. I’m not blaming you, of course, I’m not, I’m just being truthful!”  
“I do understand!” I said through gritted teeth wanting to confess everything, but not having the balls to do so. “They still shouldn’t have left you!”  
“They were all still scared of their moms,” Gerard rolled his eyes as if I was pissed off about something trivial.  
“What the fuck did your mom say?”  
“Woke up, told her I’d slept at yours,” he mumbled.  
“I-“ my heart felt heavy in my chest as if it was being dragged into my stomach. “I love you.” I surged forward and kissed his cheek fiercely, wanting to take all the painful memories away from him. If I could have switched lives with him, I would have done. He did not deserve the life he had been handed. People thought his life was perfect now, but I still saw through the way his eyes glassed over to disassociate from the atrocious things that he did, just to make the pain go away for a little bit. His comments from Friday still stung me, but it was nothing like the excruciating pain I felt when I glanced at his trembling, anxiety-ridden hands.  
“I love you too, bug. I just- I think that’s why I’m so worried about him. He might be a little weird emo kid, but I was a little weird emo kid!” He fretted. “Despite what you believe about me, Frank, I don’t think my lifestyle is one I would wish on even my worse enemy.”  
He had never been this open with me, well not for a long time anyway. He had never confessed he thought he lived immorally to me before, usually laughing it off as it was all a big joke.  
“Gerard, do you even know your brother? He’s not Joe, he’s not gonna leave him!”  
“Maybe Mikey will meet some soccer-obsessed loser who will take him away from Pete though,” he smirked, turning the conversation 180 degrees. I know what he was hinting about James came from a place of hurtful truth, but I did not want to push him when I knew it exhausted him to be so honest already.  
“Mikey’s a better guy than I could ever have been, G,” I sighed.  
“Me too,” he pursed his lips together and agreed.  
“Gerard?” I dared to ask. I was reluctant to turn the conversation back to being serious, but I had to know something.  
“Yeah, baby?”  
“Are you happy at the minute? It’s just what you said about Joe just and that.”  
“Erm, sometimes. I know I’ve changed, but I’ll always be that little weird emo kid, Frank, and sometimes Joe doesn’t understand that. Saying that, I do have fun with him and he is a good friend, well, most of the time he is.”  
“Okay, but like, you’re okay, right? You don’t feel as bad as you used to, right?” I fretted, my voice getting slightly higher with concern.  
“You worry too much, bug.”  
“Gerard!”  
“I’m okay when I’m with you, is that a good enough response for your little paranoid head?”  
“It’ll do,” I grumbled, “for now.”

The house he pulled up to reminded me a little of Joe’s. Something that would not be out of place in a Skin’s scene, something Mikey definitely lied about to his mother. This party was not where thirteen-year-olds belonged, the toxic smoke and bass pouring out the cracks of the house, whilst it vibrated with the overflow. We did not have to look for Mikey, he was already too busy looking for us.  
“Gerard!” He ran to his older brother, lines of worry littering his face. He did not belong in a place like this, he was too pure. This house was like nightfall, and Mikey was the sun; the two could not coexist.  
“Where the fuck is Dylan?” Gerard said, his voice sounding like it did when he was with his friends and far away from the soft high pitched tone that it usually was. To reiterate his point, he punched the brick wall next to him in anger.  
“Who?” I frowned.  
“Travie’s brother Dylan,” Gerard replied bluntly. “That’s who I'm assuming has supplied you with his fucking shit, Mikey, right?”  
“Gerard, please don’t!” Mikey begged him, pulling desperately on his brother's arm to get him to calm down.  
“Nah, you’re fucking thirteen Mikey!” He said, his aggression growing. “Now, tell me where he is or I’ll find him myself!”  
“Frank, please!” Mikey’s pleading eyes quickly turned to me. I agreed with him though, Gerard fighting some guys older brother would not solve anything, especially when he was so hypocritical because he had not been much older himself when he turned to this toxic world.  
“Gerard, don’t do that to him,” I pulled on his arm myself.  
“Nah, you don’t have a fucking brother, you wouldn’t understand!”  
“I know,” I grabbed his cheeks and forced him to look at me. I stared deeply into his eyes as they flickered over mine. He was in that state where he found it difficult to calm down, which had shocked me because of how calm he had been in the car. “But Pete needs your help, and you’re going to embarrass him, G.”  
“I can’t calm down,” he whined but melted slightly into my touch. I tried to ignore the way Mikey was staring at us like we had just sprouted five heads because if he wanted his brother to leave it, he was going to have to let me use our affections to my advantage.  
“Do it for me,” I glanced at his lips to let him know I would kiss him if I could. “Please?”  
“Fine,” he groaned pulling himself out of my grip and kicking the wall instead. “Now where the fuck is Pete? We need to get him out of here.”

Just like that, he went from being that scary street-wise brother to the protective but sensible one. We had stopped at the store to get water on our way here, and he was marching over to where Pete was slumped in the front garden with it like he was part of Saint fucking John’s night team or something.  
“Ryan gave him bread, but he just sicked it back up!” Mikey fretted, his innocence showing. If the situation was not so sad, Gerard and I probably would have laughed that the old wives tale that bread soaked up alcohol still lived on with the younger generation today.  
“He doesn’t need bread, Mikey, he needs water,” Gerard crouched down next to where Pete had his head thrown back, vomit dribbling from his lolling mouth.  
“Sip it, Pete, man,” Gerard said, his voice soft and kind as he poured tiny gulps into his mouth.  
“Sorry,” Pete slurred as he upchucked the water straight away.  
“Not the first time, Petey, won’t be the last,” Gerard smiled at him and ruffled his hair.  
“Gerard! He’s just being sick, stop it!” Mikey fretted.  
“He needs to flush out his system,” Gerard said not taking his eyes from Pete. “Plus, he is not getting in my baby when he’s still being sick!” I mean, I was surprised Gerard was even letting him get in his precious car at all when he was in this state.

It took a while for Pete to sober up enough for us to carry him home, but Mikey definitely thought the situation was worse than it was. He had just drunk a little too much, it wasn’t like he was in the state Gerard was in the other week. This world was new to him though, and there was nothing scarier than the reality of growing up. I stood with my arm around him, trying to warm him up as he shook violently with concern. When things finally resolved a little, we got them both in the car and left the shit hole party behind. Pete was passed out, looking almost comical in Gerard’s Northface hoodie. It was like history was repeating itself, Pete buried in an aesthetic that did not match him, and Mikey looking at him with increasing worry.  
“He said he was upset about something earlier, G,” Mikey said quietly from the back. “I think that’s why he drank so much.”  
“What was he upset about?” Gerard frowned, glancing in his rearview mirror at a sleeping Pete.  
“Life, I dunno.”  
“I’ll speak to him tomorrow, Mikes, I promise,” Gerard said.  
“You’re not gonna tell mom are you?”  
“Of course I’m not!” He scoffed. “Snitches get stitches, remember?” He smirked at his younger brother through the mirror. I knew they were referring to something they said when they were younger when they would never tell on each other. Maybe things weren’t all that different after all and the things that were could be salvaged.  
“Thanks, G,” he beamed.  
“Don’t sweat it, now put something on to drown out Franks snuffly breathing _per-lease_ ,” he mockingly rolled his eyes and tossed his brother the AUX cable to his car, something he never did. The one thing Gerard still loved was music, and he refused to believe anyone could have a better taste than him, especially his Hoodie Allen loving brother.  
“Really?” Mikey asked, excited at the unusual action.  
“Go for it, bro,” he nodded, turning the volume up despite there being no music yet.  
“ _A green plastic watering can, for a fake Chinese rubber plant_ ,” the speaker blared.  
Me and Gerard looked at each other in confusion, as it was not like Mikey to be playing Radiohead.  
“Mikey, are you sure you’re not steaming?” Gerard raised an eyebrow. “I thought you didn’t like music like this, you said it was depressing!”  
“It is, but Pete likes this song, and it's almost growing on me,” he smirked, smiling over to his passed out friend.  
“I’m impressed,” Gerard beamed at one of his old favourite bands, one that he had not listened to in a while.  
“I told you I have a good music taste!” Mikey protested.  
“Don’t push it, Mikes, you’ve still picked one of their most overplayed songs,” Gerard rolled his eyes.  
“You’re just upset I’ve not put your chav-fest music on!”  
“ _Shaadup_!” Gerard giggled, turning the song up.

We all sat in a comfortable verbal silence, listening to the soft melody as we drove down a bendy country road covered by trees.  
“ _If I could be who you wanted, all the time_ ,” the song blared as I glanced over at Gerard, the moonlight casting shadows from the leaves over his face. He was so beautiful, if his younger brother was not in the car, I don’t think I could have resisted from kissing him.  
“What?” Gerard asked as the final notes rang out into the car.  
“Nothin’, just thinking,” I hummed happily, not dragging my eyes away from him.

“Okay, Pete you gotta be quiet!” Gerard shushed Pete who was obviously not happy about being awoken from his alcohol-fuelled slumber. He hauled him to lean on his strong shoulder, Pete’s limp arm thrown around him as they staggered towards the house.  
“You alright, Mikes?” I asked him, holding back from Gerard and Pete a little.  
“I’m okay, I’m just a bit worried because he’s been having a shitty time recently.”  
“He’ll be okay! I mean, Gerard turned out okay and he was the same, wasn’t he? So I do get it.”  
“No you don’t,” he toyed with me. I knew there was no maliciousness to his statement because he was smirking at me.  
“What?” I frowned.  
“I’m not gonna say it because, ew, but can you stop play fighting with my brother please?”  
“Huh?”  
“Funny, when I play fight with Pete, he never ends up with bite marks on his neck,” he grinned at me.  
“Mikey-“  
“Thanks for picking us up, Frank!” He skipped off happily, a completely new demeanour to what he had in the car.

He couldn’t have known our secret, we were always so careful to hide it. My mind still wondered though. People always made jokes about Gerard and me being close though, it never usually meant anything.

I lay in his bed, in one of Gerard’s oversized t-shirts waiting for him to come back down the stairs.  
“Okay, Pete has just apologised, thrown up again and then told me he loves us all but I think he’s finally asleep,” he chuckled coming into the dark room and collapsing next to me in bed.  
“You know,” I smirked against his cheek, my voice hot and suggestive in his ear. “Seeing you being that protective big brother, it kinda turns me on.”  
“Oh yeah?” He turned to half cover my body with his own, my heart hammering at the possibility of what was going to happen.  
“Yeah,” I said a little breathlessly as he kissed me sensually slow. There was no hesitation, the desperate, open mouthed kisses soon lead to wondering hands as he pulled the sheets tightly over our heads.


	42. I've been through a lot, so really all I've got is just to stay pissed off

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sorry this is short and not really about Frank but like.... I think his character development has to be deeper than just being in love idk hope this is okay

**G POV-**

I woke up with my mouth dry and my head fuzzy from lack of sleep. Since I’d tried to cut down on my devices, I had never wanted them more. I knew if I could just hold off until the evening, I could be fucked into oblivion again and I wouldn’t hurt anyone in the process. Still, my legs were practically vibrating with the need for that bitter sting of cocaine to the point I was worried I would wake Frank up. He had fallen asleep half lying on top of my body, and the sound of his snuffly breathing and the weight of his frame was the only thing keeping me from waking Joe up and giving in to my addictions.

I eased my body from under him, careful not to wake him. I was unsure why he was suddenly becoming so bothered about my choices, he never seemed to give a shit before. I couldn’t be bothered for the agro I would have gotten from him if he knew I was struggling, so it was easier to just live two different lives. His face screamed innocence, his brow furrowing slightly as I retracted my body heat from him and slipped out of my bed. The beauty he possessed left me feeling hot and uncomfortable, like it always fucking did. I was comfortable with the dynamic of our relationship most of the time, it was just attention after all. Sometimes though, I remembered that attention was not hard to get at drunk, toxic parties and that maybe I was just too attached to him for my own good. I thought I was with him because he warmed the coldest of nights up, but I had to be honest and admit he was different from the others. He was a fucking boy for a start, and I didn’t even think I was gay. I didn’t understand us, all I knew is that I couldn’t resist his lips and the way he fucking looked at me with those big brown eyes. I was scared of my feelings, so sometimes I got distant, but it wasn’t long before I came crawling back to him.

I stared at him for a minute, like a fucking weirdo, until the kindness on his face scared me. I felt like I was suffocating, and I didn’t really understand why. I should never have blurred the lines of our friendship, but things had gotten too much. I didn’t remember much about the night when I had been too high to function, but all I knew was that sobriety was not in the way of stopping me on acting on what I had needed to do for years. I was confused as to why he had not stopped me, but I didn’t dare ask him in case his answer hurt me. I was in a place darker than ever before, and he was the only thing that offered me any source of light.

I physically could not be in the same room as him at that moment, my emotions becoming too much to comprehend. That’s what I did though, I didn’t think. I had found the cure for sadness, and it was to just shut your mind up in any way possible. I tried not to think about the way the only time I felt something was when he kissed me because it left me petrified. I kissed Amber, I had kissed other girls, but none of them had ever made my stomach flutter with nerves quite as he did. Their lips left me cold and almost sucked the life out of me. Not his though, they breathed something back into me I had spent years without, I just hoped I did not drain him in the process. My infatuation with him was selfish because this would never end well, but I was in too deep to stop this.   
I walked up the stairs, my shaking hands needing something to occupy them to stop them from dialling Dean’s number. It couldn’t have been past 5, the sky still an inky black colour and the house still silent, but I knew there would be someone awake to sell me the stuff I craved. The only things that made me feel better when things were this forlorn were Frank and cocaine; I just didn’t know what was more deadly to me.

I went to get a glass of water, anything to preoccupy me enough to come down from the hypo state of anxiety I was beginning to enter. I wasn’t having a panic attack, just freaking out a little. It was something completely different that distracted me though, something looking up at me with almost terrified hazel eyes.

“Shit, you made me jump, man,” I said, although my numb state of being made it hard to feel anything at all; even fear.   
“Sorry,” Pete squeaked, trying to scramble to his feet. The kid had looked better, but that was to be expected. If my own experience was anything to go by, he wouldn’t have even been completely sober at that point.  
“Hey,” I grabbed his arm as he tried to walk past me. The thing with Pete was that, to put it bluntly, he was weird. I didn’t know why my brother insisted on keeping him around when he was in with a popular group of kids and Pete didn’t really seem to blend well with them. I think if it were not for Mikey, Pete would not have been involved with them at all. It was something about him though, his nervous frame and the way he did anything to avoid eye contact that made me feel something deep in my chest. I didn’t think it was pity, well at least not in the traditional sense, more a feeling of protection. I had ignored my inner voice for so long, I couldn’t identify exactly what it was about Pete that made me hurt, but I knew it existed.   
“I’m really sorry about last night, Gerard,” he fumbled over his words as if I was intimidating or something. Pete did not know me when I was younger and exactly like him, but I still thought I seemed approachable now. It only dawned on me then just how closed off I had been to my family, hurting them because they were the closest to me. Pete wasn’t my family of course, but he had still gotten caught up in the path of my self-destruction. It was awkward to admit, but I was still a little envious of the way that Mikey ran to Frank to tell him about the girls he liked or the sports clubs he was joining and not me. That was Frank though, people just liked him. He was funny, beautiful and kind; everything I was not.   
“Shut up, bro,” I rolled my eyes. “If it’ll make you feel better, I can tell you something fucking tragic that happened to me a few weeks back.”  
“What?” He finally looked up from where he had been staring at the floor nervously, as I dropped his arm I had not realised I had been holding.  
“Frank had to come and get me from this party because I was tripping balls,” I tried to smile, but could not manage it at the embarrassing memory. I had tried to block it from my mind, cringing every time that it forced its way into my thoughts.  
“Why?” Pete frowned.  
“Because I felt shit so I did something stupid.”  
“Why did you feel shit?”  
“You’re a nosey little fucker, aren’t you?” I raised an eyebrow.  
“Sorry,” he mumbled, shooting his gaze at the floor again.  
“Nah, it’s cool, I was just a bit confused about someone, I mean I still am. I’d tell you it gets better, Petey, but I’d be lying.”  
“You’re so happy now though!”  
“Am I?” I scoffed.   
“You have Amber, she’s fit!” He jested.  
“Bro, you’re thirteen stay away from girls for as long as you can! They only cause you a headache, believe me!”  
“Is that why you don’t love them?”  
“Nah, I don’t love them because I think I want someone else that I can’t have, but that’s just between you and me,” I attempted to smile at him.  
“Why are you telling me this? I thought you didn’t like me.”  
I didn’t know why I was confiding in Pete, he was too young to understand, way too hopeful on love still to be realistic on the situation. I guess he was just the only person in my life that I could tell pieces of information to, no matter how cryptic I kept them.  
“I don’t dislike you, Pete,” I sighed, avoiding his question.  
“You always ignore me!”  
“You make me remember things I don’t want to remember.”  
“Like what?”  
“There you go again, being a nosey fuck! Now, do you wanna tell me why you drank so much last night?”  
“Oh,” he blushed, “I dunno.”  
“Come on! I know you won’t tell Mikey he’s too preppy,” I nudged him slightly and smirked, trying to understand what was going on in his head.   
“Life’s shit, Gerard!” He just randomly burst out with.  
“You’re thirteen! You’re too young to be that cynical!”  
“Oh don’t you start with that,” he rolled his eyes at me. “My mom keeps telling me I’m too young to be sad, and it’s probably just my hormones or something. I don’t get it though! Why is Mikey, Ryan, Travie all of them so normal, and then there’s me who is just so fucking angry all the time?”  
“Because you’re smarter than them,” I dared to say, my own past making me bias.  
“Huh?” He frowned.  
“Well, more like aware I mean. You see things for what they are, and it’s shit.”  
“But how do I stop it?” He fretted.  
“If I knew that Pete, I’d tell ya,” I tutted. “But, you know I’ll help you if I can.”  
“Thanks, Gerard,” he beamed at me, warming my freezing cold heart just a little.   
“Was there anything specifically bothering you?”  
“No, not really just- no it doesn’t matter.”  
“Tell me!”  
“Erh, there’s just some guys a couple of years above of me that keep pushing me around, but it’s fine.”  
“Who?” I frowned.  
“No one!” He blushed.  
“Tell me!” I said again, knowing he was seconds from spilling anyway, he just needed encouragement.   
“Erh, I think his name is Liam, that guy who is friends with Adam and the popular lot, I dunno their surnames.”  
I knew exactly who they were despite them being a couple of years younger, the same guys were constantly pestering Joe for weed.  
“Leave it with me, Pete,” I got up and ruffled his hair, feeling the fear from earlier completely disperse.   
“Gerard, no!”  
“I said, leave it with me!” I called as I made my way back downstairs.

The same soundly asleep face that had made me terrified only minutes before now enticed me in. His breaths that were still shallow with his blocked nose almost made me weak with protection for him. He had always been able to stick up for himself, but I still wanted nothing more than to keep him safe. I crawled into bed next to him, trying my hardest to be silent but failing.  
“You’re fucking freezing,” he grumbled, his voice still thick with sleep. Despite his harsh words, he pulled me closer to him, spooning me and tickling the back of my neck with his breaths.  
“Sorry,” I mumbled into the dark room, pulling his arms around me tighter and joining our hands.

****

  
“G, where ya fucking going?” Ed frowned at me as I separated from him and Tom in the school hallway.   
“One sec!” I called in a fake cheery voice spotting my target leaning cockily against the wall, throwing bits of paper at younger kids trying to avoid him.

“You wanna fucking make someone feel small, make me fucking feel small, Liam!” I snapped at him, dragging him to stand properly by his stupid collar.   
“What the fuck are you doing?” His friend, Adam asked me as I seethed at Liam.  
“Get off me!” Liam said, trying to get me off of him. Kids like that had made my life a fucking misery for years, and now was my revenge.  
“Gerard, bro! He’s just a kid,” Ed rushed over, placing a hand on my shoulder. I looked at Liam’s cowering face as he realised there was always going to be someone bigger and badder than he was. He could pick on thirteen-year-olds to feel superior all he wanted, he just had to accept the consequences of that. I kissed my teeth at him, and dropped him, leaving his school shirt collar and tie all askew.  
“Leave my fucking brother and his friends alone, or you can come see me in the real world,” I pushed him to reiterate my point. “If you wanna pick on younger kids, then so can I!”


	43. Don't you think I knew about your pretty girlfriends?

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The song for this chapter is literally my fav song in the whole entire world and is about someone being in love with someone but becoming themselves again because they're being treated badly so I thought it was fitting but yes here it is if you wanna listen to it; https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dDUd_FKg0bc
> 
> Significant lyrics to this chapter too long for a title; 
> 
> And all my life I never had a chance  
> Don't you think I knew about all your pretty girlfriends  
> But I waited for you, gave you time to decide  
> But you never saw it from anybody else's side  
> So I packed up my things and I faced up my doubts  
> You know I think I will grow my hair back out  
> Nevermind what you think  
> Nevermind what you like  
> I'll take it out to the streets for somebody else to admire

**F POV-**

November passed quickly because being loved by him made everything a blur. Three weeks had passed in the blink of an eye, all because his arms were around me. Things had been better than ever between us, and he really had appeared to change. It wasn’t just me who had noticed either, his family had even commented on the positive change he had shown. Of course, he was still the Gerard everyone feared in school, but I was now accepting of it and I had never been happier. I had never known love before, but it was fucking sweet. No one on this planet could have changed my mind of him, and for once I was finally believing he felt the same.

I was staring at him, my eyes wide and pupils blown as I watched him in our science class before lunch. He and Joe were giggling furiously at something I couldn’t hear, a stupid Santa hat on his head. He looked up from whatever he and Joe were doing, checked he was not also looking, and stuck his tongue out at me. I grinned back at him, feeling giddy when he blew a kiss at me. I imitated catching it and slapping it on my cheek.  
“You got it bad, Frank,” Kenny smirked from next to me, drawing shitty misshapen love hearts all over his science book.  
“You’re one to talk!” I snatched the page he was drawing on from him and giggled at all the doodles he had made that would not have been out of place in a lower school book. For once though, I did not find Kenny sickly sweet, instead, I got it. We had both fallen in love over the past month, and fuck, we both found it difficult to hide it. I had met Maisie once, and she was really fucking sweet, everything I’d wished for Kenny to find. I also saw the way her deep blue, ocean eyes blinked at him adoringly, and I knew that she was captivated by him. Her powdery blonde hair, freckled face and gap-filled teeth were everything Kenny had ever wanted. Gerard and I’s relationship could be sweet like that, but fuck, things had heated up to an almost unbearable level between us. There had been many nights like the one before Halloween when things had been closer to reaching the next level, but each time he would groan in frustration about not wanting to physically hurt me. I wasn’t stupid, I knew it was going to hurt but I wanted to do it for him. I wasn’t sure why that dynamic always happened, but it was always him that was on top of me getting closer each and every time to giving me what I wanted. I think he was just more experienced than I in that area, but neither of us wanted to be reminded of his past.

As I sat down at lunchtime, I felt a strong pair of arms wrap around me from behind and place a secret kiss in my hair.  
“Gerard!” I blushed but refused to let his arms go from around me.  
“Sup, baby?” he moved to the chair next to me and tossed his arm around my shoulders.  
“Oh fuck off,” Matt groaned, again. “I’m so sick of everyone around me being in love and I can’t even get a text back!”  
“I’m not in love,” James said bitterly. Things between us had become a little awkward as he had started to withdraw himself, but selfishly, I found it hard to care. He was fine when we were by ourselves, but as soon as Gerard was around he was rude and cold, and I wasn’t going to entertain him anymore. I knew they did not like each other, but it was difficult to care when I was this happy. James was still my second favourite person in this world, and I still tried to make time for just him and me, but his good mood never seemed to last for long.  
“Anyway,” Gerard said ignoring him, something he did a lot. “I heard that they’re serving brownies today,” he dragged on my hand to pull me up.  
“Gerard, I can’t! I’m gonna get fat and we’re in the middle of a tournament!” I protested, weakly.  
“Bullshit,” he yanked me one last time so that I was on my feet.

We joined the queue to get food, struggling to not show each other any sort of affection in such a public place. I knew his friends were already suspicious enough with the amount of time we spent together, they didn’t need anything more to fuel their conspiracies.   
“So,” he began to speak as he briefly tickled my hand with his little finger subtly. “I was thinking, there are all those Christmas markets coming to town next week, and I thought I would take you.”  
“Be careful, G,” I smirked. “You’re being so cringey with these date ideas that people are going to start thinking we’re Kenny and Maisie soon.” I was only winding him up, of course, I loved when he did stuff like that with me. Our relationship may have changed in some ways, but we could still pick on each other without malice. I was glad that hadn’t changed, but I just loved to pretend I was offended by his words so he would kiss me.   
“Fine then, we won’t go we’ll just sit at home,” he pretended to be offended.  
“Oh, I don't mind staying at home,” I glanced at his lips.  
“I told you, don’t look at me like that in school hours, that’s the rules!” He groaned.   
“Why not?” I smirked.   
“Because Joe Delo thinks that me and you are just good friends, and he’s about to see something he really will not want to if you carry on!”  
I was about to think of some witty reply until I heard one of my least favourite voices call my favourite name from behind us.   
“Gerard, babe!” Amber came rushing over, her high heels tapping on the canteen floor.   
“Ah shit,” he grumbled to himself. He liked to keep the two of us separate because he told me he didn’t want her to see how he looked at me or something but, reassured me he did not look at her the same way. The funny thing was, I actually believed him. Whenever he was not with his friends, he was constantly around me and I had only spent 2 nights alone ever since that night where we’d picked Mikey up. I saw the way he dodged her kisses and affections and, could only wonder why she had not taken it to heart. I had to trust him though because trust was the only thing that kept us together. He told me he was getting ready to break up with her, he was just a bit scared because of Joe’s questions as to why he was with me all the time. He was not ready to be honest about us, and I had to respect that. He had a lot more to lose than I did, he was more insecure and he had a history that still haunted him to this day.   
“Babe,” she said again as I tried to hide the way I rolled my eyes. Babe, babe, fucking babe. _All. The. Fucking. Time._ “Why aren’t you sat with us?”  
“Erm, I lost a bet with Frank so I have to buy him a brownie,” Gerard said awkwardly, increasing the distance between them.   
“Well, can you hurry please?” She moved closer to him and grabbed his arm. He acted almost as if she had given him an 1000 volt shock with the way he jumped back from her. “Babe?” She frowned. “What’s wrong?”  
“Nothing!” He giggled nervously, “I wish everyone would stop fucking asking me that!”  
“It’s just you were off last night and-“  
“I’m fine!” He snapped.   
“Last night?” I frowned.   
“Oh my God!” He groaned, “just let me get my best friend a fucking brownie and I’ll be over as soon as I have!”  
“Fine,” She scowled, spinning on her thin heel and walking away.   
“Gerard, what was she on about?” I fretted, panic rising up my throat like bile. “You were with me last night, weren’t you?”  
“Yes! You know I was! I can’t be in two places at once, can I?”   
“But you went home to get some clothes, didn’t you?” I began freaking out.   
“Yes, But did I come back with clothes?”  
“Yeah, But-“  
“Exactly! I went home to get some clothes, Jesus!” He seemed spooked by something, and that thought would not settle. I wanted to believe him more than anything because he had only left for an hour whilst I revised for my exams a little. He had come back with clothes, but what had she been going to say before he interrupted her?   
“Gerard, please don’t lie to me anymore,” I almost whispered, scared of his response.   
“I haven’t lied about anything!” His voice sounded high and irritable, in a way that filled me with distress. “Right,” he slammed his hands down on the counter more forcefully than I think he meant to as we reached the front of the line. “Can I get a brownie, please?” 

I couldn’t get the thought of what Amber had said off my mind which was only made worse when I saw just how undeserving she was of him. I couldn’t hear their tables conversation, but I saw the way she excluded Hannah from the others by blocking her out the circle to talk to all the boys. It only hurt my heart more when she smiled sadly at me, with pursed lips from across the hall.   
“Frank, you eating that?” Matt said at the end of lunch to that stupid brownie I wish I had never gotten.   
“Nah,” I tossed it to him, “you have it, bro.”  
“Are you okay, Frank?” Nathan frowned.   
“Yep! I have a mock test next period so erh... just going over some sport things in my head.” I wasn’t lying, I did have a practice test, but that was not why I was anxious. 

“Sir, can I go and pee?” I whispered in the middle of the test I was obviously going to fail. My mind could not stop going over his hands on her body, and it was enough to make me sick. I had been obsessively sipping water, taking the brief second it distracted me and letting it bathe my body in momentary relief. It had made me need the bathroom though, plus, the silence of the classroom was becoming deafeningly loud. I couldn’t help but focus on the scratching of pens on paper around the room, the sniffing of winter colds and the mummer of the year 7s PE class going on in the sports hall downstairs. Every time I tried to write about the muscles of the fucking body, all I could think of was his hands running over hers. Holding her like he held me, kissing her like he kissed me and even going further than that because she was a girl, and would always have an advantage to me. He told me they had not had sex in months, but even the thought that it had happened in the past left me feeling suffocated. It wasn’t fair of me, I had never suggested to him that I had felt any differently before, but she’d still had him first. His mom still thought they were together, so did his friends, fuck, even she did! It was hard watching someone that had seen all of him at some point still be so prominent in his life, especially when I had to sit there with my mind going into a frenzy.   
“Yeah, But you’ve barely written anything,” Mr Lowery came over, frowning at my almost empty paper. “Is everything okay?”  
“Yeah!” I said, my voice irate and clearly far from okay.   
“It’s not like you to not write anything! I know this is only a mock test, Frank, but it’s there to help you identify what you need to work on!”  
“I know!” I said, getting to my feet quickly. “I just need to pee!”   
“Okay, well be quick,” he eyed me up and down cautiously before finally moving to the side and letting me past him. 

After I’d finally gotten rid of my overfilled bladder from anxiously sipping water, I’d taken a moment to stare at myself in the mirror. The bleached side of my hair was almost grown out, and Gerard had mentioned that he missed it already, so I had contemplated asking Kenny to do it again. I still kept my nose piercing in, always enjoying the compliments he gave me about it. I knew I was a boy, but I wasn’t exactly Gerard’s type. The girls he went for were curvy, bleached blonde and confident if not a little bitchy, so I didn’t understand why he liked me at all. He told me every single day that he did though, and fuck, I wasn’t going to try and change his mind on it. I knew I had to go back because my mother was going to receive a phone call if I got lower than a D on this mock exam, and I would have been forced into after-school revision classes which meant less time with him. I needed to calm down, he loved me, he didn’t love her and things were fucking peachy. 

Well, I thought that they were. As I walked out of the bathroom, I was taken aback when I saw Amber and Hannah waiting outside of a classroom. I shouldn’t have done it, it was weird for a start, but the inaudible twist of her tongue was driving me fucking crazy. I needed to know something, even if that something was something I did not want to hear. I was torn between doing the right thing and going back to my sports practice exam or letting my paranoia get the better of me. 

Of course, craziness won. How could I have even focused on that damn exam when I was this close to finding out the truth? Well, I assumed the truth. From the distressed look on her beautiful face, I could only assume she was talking about the one person that made my expression worry in the same way. Like a creep, I slipped down the corridor so I was just that bit closer that I could hear them. It was muffled, but there was no denying certain words and who’s voice was who. I prayed for the conversation to be about how things were very nearly over between the two of them, anything that coincided with what he was telling me. I never in a million years thought I would be this kind of jealous person, but he did things to my sanity that made me feel as if I needed a shrink. 

“I don’t expect you to understand, Hannah. I mean, I’m not being rude, but no boys really ever like you back, have they?” I heard Amber say as I leant against the wall. It was risky, she was on one side of the corner and I was on another, and only had to walk around to see. If it were not for what she had said at lunchtime, I probably wouldn’t have even been listening in the first place. My heart ached for Hannah and the verbal toxins being poured into her by who was supposed to be her best friend, but my heart hurt or myself more. I had spent my whole life fucking hurting for other people, mainly Gerard, and I had to learn now how to grieve for my own happiness. That sounded like such a pathetic problem, but I didn’t think you could truly love yourself until you'd let yourself feel all spectrum of emotions, even the ones that you did not want to feel. That’s why I carried on listening, even though I was swimming with sharks who smelt blood.   
“I know,” Hannah continued, “I’m just saying, are you sure he’s not cheating on you?”  
It was wrong, but that sentence flooded me with happiness. They were talking about how things were not going great between them, that meant he was sticking to his word about not showing her affection.   
“I’m sure, Han! Like, we know all the same people, if he was cheating on me, I’m sure I would have heard by now!”  
“But, I don’t understand why you put up with it?”  
“Everyone says he’s never felt like this about a girl before. He just makes me feel like no one ever has before!” She gushed. Maybe we were more similar than I fucking thought. She had no reason not to, but her talking like that about the love of my life nearly made me become consumed with envy. I had become increasing territorial with him with our budding relationship, but so had he with James, so I felt although it was a shitty feeling, it was to be expected.   
“Besides,” she muttered so quietly that I had to strain my ears to hear to listen into the darkness that coated her voice. “He’s just good at certain things.”  
“What?” Hannah said dumbly.   
“Like last night, he was grounded right so he had to sneak out, but like fuck Hannah! No boy has ever been that... good before!”   
My ears burnt hot with her words, my breathing hitching in my throat as I begged her to not be talking about what I was thinking she meant.   
“Good at what?”  
“Sex, Hannah! Fucking!”

Traditional torture was being in pain, being mocked and humiliated but I think I would have preferred it to this. I bit down on my thumb hard, not being able to run away from the situation nor could I bring myself to stop listening. Every word that Amber said about describing how the love of my life touched her felt like a dagger in my heart. Friends stabbed you in the back with betrayal, but lovers did it in the heart. With the hand I had not got clamped in my mouth by the thumb, I clutched at my chest trying to remember the simple function of breathing. Last night he had kissed me and promised to be right back, and to make it worse he’d come back. He’d had sex with her, and then he had come back and cradled me in his arms. With those fucking hands he had touched her with. I felt sick, my stomach churning and my head growing fuzzy. 

“Girls, the computer room is free now!” I heard a more mature voice call cheerily, probably belonging to a teacher. The voice saved me from my confinement but did not bring me any comfort. As soon as I heard the door to the room they had been waiting outside of click, I sprinted. 

I sprinted outside of the gates, far away from my problems. I was shocked at how calm I actually was. Yes, I was running, but I did not feel like crying or even the sadness I was used to. I was far from happy, but it was more like a numbness within me more than anything. I think in my heart that I already knew. I knew where he was going all those times he told me was just nipping out, I knew why he had gotten so defensive when I went to change the song in his car last week and had snapped his phone out of my hands and I knew there had been a reason why he had not broken up with her yet.  I think I just hoped those reasons not to be true.

For the first time in my life though, I felt nothing towards him. I thought of his integrating hazel eyes and felt numbness. I was okay, but I was done with him. 


	44. In the mourning, I'll let you die

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> THE SADDEST PARAMORE SONG MAKING THE CHAPTER MORE EMO I'M SORRY
> 
> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O8T1ZGmaqi8
> 
> (Also, this song is very different to MCR and bands like that but this is what he's listening to on his bed if anyone wants the pragmatics lol; https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ABHWSOCQnww )

“Baby, can I come in?” My mother knocked delicately on my door, only just walking through the door from work herself. I had gotten back to the village I lived in relatively quickly, walking fast to avoid my thoughts, but it was when I stopped I struggled. I had purposely walked the long way home, going all around the back fields and not using the short cut alleyways just so I did not have to listen to my mind. I had never been so thankful to have my headphones with me in my whole life, especially because I hadn’t been bringing them with me to school lately because Gerard’s voice had been my favourite sound. By some power greater than I, I had randomly picked them up this morning.   
I didn’t listen to music that meant anything to me, I needed something loud with few words that would just silence the replay of Amber's voice I had in my head. Listening to music that didn’t mean anything was like fucking a stranger one a one night-stand, no emotion was needed, but it momentarily filled the void.   
That had been hours ago and when I had eventually stumbled home because of how much I was violently shivering from the harsh winter weather, I still had that same song on repeat, too loud to be comfortable.   


_“When you’re dressing up_   
_Still, it’s not enough,_   
_Who you tryna impress, man?_   
_Needy for some love_

_Here to be someone_   
_Tryna be someone,”_

  
The lyrics sang out as I had laid on my bed trying to feel something. To feel something so much for so long only made it scarier now I felt as if there was nothing inside anymore. The overly loud synth flooded my bedroom, I didn’t even have the energy to listen to it properly. It was just loud and flooding into one audible mess, but it was what I needed. I didn’t need a crying guitar accompanied by Lewis Capaldi’s broken, heartfelt voice, nor did I need the pissy-ness of Frank Turner or the seductiveness of Alex Turner. I needed the numbness of the current track; monotonous with no emotion.   
  
I did not reply, but my mom let herself into my room anyway. I was thankful that I had not felt sadness because tears were a lot harder to hide than emptiness.   
“Woah, it’s dark in here,” she immediately said, washing basket tucked securely under her arm. She frowned at the only light in the room, the LED strip I had under my desk projecting out a dark purple light, giving everything a weird hue to match the strange music I had playing. I did not reply, I couldn’t find the energy to have a phatic conversation about the lighting of my bedroom.   
“It’s gotten really cold lately, hasn’t it?” She sighed and sat on the end of my bed. I had been lying on my back, corpse style, not feeling any more alive than one. “Frank, I said it’s got cold! I think it might snow soon.”  
“Mmm, yeah cold,” I forced myself to say, like a robot on autopilot.   
“So, you agree it’s cold, yes?” She pestered me again.   
“Yes!” I snapped a little too harshly at her, my emotions too out of sync to give an appropriate response.   
“So, Frankie, If you agree with me that it’s cold enough to snow, why did you leave school and walk home in the middle of an exam?”  
Shit.   
“How did you-“  
“School rang me saying you hadn’t returned to your exam, Gerard said he hadn’t dropped you off and I kind of figured at the soaking wet shoes you left downstairs.”  
Trudging my way through winter fields caked in mud probably wasn’t the most incognito thing to do, but I’d needed it at the time. Fuck, I needed it now, but there was no way I had an excuse to wander off into the dark night when the temperature was quickly plummeting below zero. All though the room was not well lit, the purple ambience gave off enough light to see my mothers worried face. Although I could not feel much, through muscle memory I knew that look hurt me. I wasn’t capable of feeling love for anybody at that moment, even my family, but I knew that feeling was only going to be temporary and she did not deserve to feel bad.   
“Sorry, I just felt sick,” I mumbled, suddenly wishing I was as good at lying as Gerard was.   
“So, why did you walk instead of getting Gerard to drop you off? I’ve just spoken to him, he’s really worried about you!”  
Worried about me? No. Worried I’d found out the truth? Absolutely. To him, I was a game, and although he did not like to lose it, it wouldn’t kill him like it was killing me. To hear his name spoken aloud made that sickness in my stomach worse, like I was about to have an audition or something that my whole entire life depended on. My skin felt hot and I wanted to disappear so I did not have to exist anymore. I needed to be anywhere but here, but I couldn’t even bring myself to do anything more than the occasional shuddery breath. I needed to pick up the pieces of my shattered heart, but the shards were like glass and I just did not feel like cutting my fingers at that moment, even though I knew I was going to eventually have to do it.   
“He had class, I needed fresh air,” I replied bluntly.   
“There’s fresh air, but then there’s walking home when there are snow storms around the corner!”  
“I know, I’m sorry, I should have told someone,” I replied in a monotoned voice, not having the energy to feel guilty.   
“It’s okay, I told them that you were sick anyway when reception called, so you can do that practice exam again.” She leant forward and felt my forehead for a fever with the back of her hand.   
“You don’t have a temperature,” she frowned, “but you do look a bit peaky. Just stay in bed, munchkin, I’ll get some homemade soup on for you.”  
“Thanks, mom,” I forced out. Soup wasn’t going to warm me up, I think I was beyond help. The chill that had reached my bones from the walk home earlier felt like nothing to the coldness in my long-dead heart.   
  
As soon as my mother went, I turned that song back on repeat and entered a fleeting sleep that never really felt deep enough to gain any respite from. Although my slumber was shallow, my dreams were deep and far too hidden in my subconscious mind to understand. The only thing I did understand, however, was they scared me, whatever they fucking were.   
  
Rain hammered on the window outside, sleet threatening at any moment with the ever dropping temperature. The almost ice on the window made tapping noises like fingers, that scared me a little. I was in a state of half-asleep panic, small things seeming much more threatening in the dead of the night. It was when my door opened, however, that I felt as if my heart stopped completely. I was not scared of much, but in the anxious state I was in, I pulled the duvet over my head tightly like I did when I was younger and I was terrified of made up monsters. Realistically, there was nothing to be scared of, but I felt weird. I still felt nothing but at the same time, I felt way too much. Nothing was distinguishable to me except fear, and that was the emotion that took over. I started breathing quicker as my heart began to palpitate, unsure of whether I was awake or asleep. It was way past the time my parents went to bed, I could tell that from the deadness of my house, so why was someone coming into my room? I didn’t know if it was some fucked up sleep paralysis or those monsters I feared when I was younger existed.   
  
Those monsters did exist though, they just didn't have pointy teeth and beady, yellow eyes. They were beautiful, tempting and they made you fall in love with them before snatching it all away.   
“Frank! Shh, it’s just me!” I heard his voice from my door but I was in too much of a state of anxiety to be calm about the situation. “Frank?” He said again into the mauve lit room. He instantly recognised my quickened, panic breaths as I shot up and clutched at my chest desperately. I knew I was in the middle of a panic attack, but it was still hard to remember that in the process of one. To me, a panic attack felt as if I was being chased by something evil and when I reached this state of anxiety was as if I was caught. I had only had a couple before, but none of them had ever felt this bad. I felt as if I was dying, and it was causing my body to tremble all over. I was still in that weird state of mind where you felt as if you were half asleep, eyes heavy and mind puddled, making it impossible to see any clarity in the situation.  
“Shh, what’s wrong?” He freaked out and ran towards me, his touch not helping me. I snatched myself out of his grip, backing away from him as if he had just pulled out a ten-inch blade that he was threatening to kill me with.  
“Breath, Frank, just fucking breath!” He crouched down on my bed, staring into my panic filled eyes deeply, exaggerating his breathing that I was supposed to be replicating. I didn’t know what it was, but I could not calm down. “You’re scaring me!” He panicked again as if he actually cared about me. He reached out and tried to grab my hand again, which I pulled away from him and clutched close to my own chest. Those fucking hands were the same ones that had touched her, all when he had been whispering stupid fucking lies to me.   
“Okay!” He said, holding his hands above his head, “I’ll stay back, just calm down. I think you’re having a panic attack.”  
Well, no fucking shit Sherlock.

He remained quiet until my state neutralised. I still felt terrible and full of fear, but at least I could fucking breath again. He was looking at me, his eyes wide and confused at someone he had thought of as being strong for so long crumbling in front of him. Gerard was the one who had panic attacks, not me.   
“Are you okay?” He edged forward, seeming desperate to help but unsure on what to do.  
“Don’t Gerard!” I turned away from him, my voice raspy and low caused by my dry mouth.   
“I’m confused, Frank! I just came around because you disappeared earlier and your mom said you walked home. Then you weren’t answering your phone and I got worried about you! I came upstairs and I thought you were awake because you had music playing, I’m really sorry that I startled you, I just wanted to turn the speaker off so it didn’t wake you up!”  
His words sounded so genuine, I could have almost believed them. He could spin words like a fucking poet, so deep and full of feeling, apart from it was all lies. He had blatantly only come over to see me now because he’d exhausted all of his other resources. I mean props for him for effort, his rain-soaked clothes and chattering teeth from the cool air he had brought in with him almost made me believe he had almost put in the effort to want to see me. Yesterday, I would have fallen into his arms, but tonight, I just crumbled. Inside, I was screaming but he couldn't hear that. I looked at him and felt strangely tranquil, something I had not been expecting to feel after loving him for so many years. The scent of him wafted towards me as he moved even closer, but it didn’t make me crazy like it always had done.   
“Gerard,” I said more strongly this time, “just go.”  
“Wait? What’s wrong?” He frowned.  
“I know everything,” I said so calmly, it seemed to freak us both out. I did not have to explicitly say what I meant, he knew.   
“Baby,” he said weakly.  
“No,” I held my finger up to silence him. “I know you never stopped seeing her.”  
“You’ve got this twisted-“  
“Have I?” I looked at him coldly, getting to my feet just to be away from him more than anything. He quickly followed me though, as if he couldn’t take the hint.  
“Yeah-“  
“No, Gerard, I haven’t.” I was surprised myself when my voice wavered. I thought I was numb, but maybe I had just been in shock. The crack in my voice echoed around the room exposing each and every one of my secrets, but I was too far gone to stop.   
“You know that I was still seeing her!”   
“I didn’t know you were fucking her,” my throat started to constrict and I felt tears threatening to fall. “Fuck, Gerard! You touched me with those fucking hands! You told me you loved me!”  
“I do love you-“  
“You couldn’t love anybody if you fucking tried,” all the hurt from earlier spilling out like bile. My eyes started to brim with salty tears which fell hot and sticky on my cheeks as they overflowed. They tumbled down my cheek, my head physically hurting from the pressure that it caused. I didn’t even attempt to dry my eyes, he had seen everything, I just let the fat droplets roll down my face and onto the floor space between us.  
“Don’t do that, you’re breaking my heart,” he replied, his own voice becoming a little strangled.   
“You broke mine,” I shrugged, wiping my face ferociously with my sweater sleeve.  
“I never fucking said we were anything but friends!”   
“I know,” I dared to look at him. His expression looked forlorn, his own eyes glassy like he could ever fucking understand the hurt in my heart. The numbness from earlier had erupted inside me and left me distraught. I still loved him, and it fucking hurt. “I’m not blaming you.”  
“Huh?” He said desperately, shocked by my response. I wanted nothing more than to scream in his face about how he had hurt me, but at the end of the day, I had been let down by promises that I had created in my own head. He had never claimed to be anything that he was not, my fantasies had just escaped me.  
“I-“ I began by swallowing hard to try and stop crying, but failing miserably. “I think this was all a mistake, G.”  
“Don’t say that! I fucking need you, Frank,” a small tear overflowed from his glassy eyes tumbling down his flushed cheeks. If I did not love myself, I could have fallen for his lies again.   
“And I need to stop kidding myself. I’ve hurt for too long about this and it’s not healthy for either of us.”  
“What am I going to do without you in my life?” He said, his voice small and heavy.  
“I’m not leaving your life,” I inhaled deeply, “I just think we should be friends.”  
“You can’t say that! We can’t just go back to how things were before!” He was fully bawling his eyes out at that point, but his tears were easier to take when I remembered he’d had sex with somebody else.  
“Well,” I nodded solemnly, not taking my eyes from the door behind him. “It’s my choice.”  
“Frankie, baby,” he came so close to me that he could grab my hands. They did not grab his back though, nor did I pull them away, instead I kept them balled in a fist. “Please?” He added, despite it being futile. I had made my mind up, and that choice was that we were going to be friends. I wasn’t stupid, staying away from him completely was like winding up a jack in the box, it was just going to make the pressure to much and I would spring towards him. No, if I was still his friend, I could still have him in my life. This time I was stronger all because I had that intrusive image of him laying her down and placing those delicate kisses that I knew too well all over her body, like he had done to mine, and that was enough to make me never want to touch him again.  
“I think you should go home,” I muttered.  
“Can I not stay?”  
“No,” I said forcefully.  
“Bug-“  
“Don’t call me that,” I said assertively, wiping the escaping tears one last time whilst I did so. I must have looked a wreck, but he looked worse. Whilst I was feeling nothing for the first time in years, he seemed to finally be feeling something. His quiet, slight tears had turned into hysterics, clutching desperately at my closed fist as if it could change anything at this point. The illusion of him was ruined. “I promise you, Gerard, I’m still here for you, but just in the way I was before.”  
“I ruined everything,” he sobbed. Half of me wanted to hug him and promise it would be okay, but I wasn’t even sure if it would be myself. Yes, I was optimistic about us being friends, it was going to suck at first but I thought I could do it, but that did not make that horrible feeling in my chest go away. I knew that it was the right thing to do, but why did it feel so fucking wrong?  
“No,” I attempted to reach out with my shaky thumb and wipe a few of his tears away, but quickly retracted it when he tried to lean into my hand. “We both ruined it by changing our friendship, but that doesn’t mean we can't salvage something.”  
“I love you,” he whispered sounding broken. He wasn’t though, he just had never been rejected before.   
“And I love you too,” I replied, “but I love us too much to fuck this up. We can end this now and still be okay, G, or we can end it in like a year from now and hate each other's guts. I don’t wanna hate you! You’re my favourite person on this whole planet and I think if we hated each other, it would kill me.”  
“Please,” he said again.  
“No, go home.”   
“Okay,” he said again, taking a deep, shuddery breath. “I’ll speak to you at school tomorrow.”  
“Okay… bro,” I forced out and slapped his arm like I perhaps would have done in the past. The action felt foreign and uncomfortable, but it was needed.   
“I hope you sleep well.”  
“Thank you, I hope you do too,” I replied awkwardly.  
“Okay, well,” he leant forward slowly. I knew what he was going to do, it was something I had seen Amber try to do to him many times before. Although the action was slow, it still seemed rushed. As he bent to kiss my lips, I quickly moved my head so his own awkwardly collided with my cheek. Being that close to his mouth was torture as if I was dehydrated and they were water that contained contaminants that would kill me. He moved back even slower than before, his tear stained cheeks making it even harder to resist him.  
“I agree,” he whispered into the darkness, “we should just be friends.”  
“Okay.”

I did not sleep again that night, instead, I wept so much that my head hurt. The emotion that had left me void earlier now completely taking over my body to the point I was crying like a toddler who could not catch their breath. I was having to bite my pillow to stop any whimpers escaping, that very pillow that still smelt of his mother’s washing powder. Crying for hours on end was painful, my head was swimming, my throat was hoarse and my eyes were tired but every time I closed my eyes I saw them together. He had said it himself, we were now friends and nothing more. It wasn’t as if I wished that I hadn’t heard the information, I knew that I needed to, it was just a hard pill to swallow. Being so deeply in love with someone can create them to be some kind of immortal being in your head, too good for any human attributes, and I had never known pain like realising he was human after all. Stopping loving him with him being in my life was not going to be an easy task, but hating him was harder. Things were going to different between us now, but at least now he could not hurt me like he had the power to do before. I was snatching back the key to the cage that I kept my heart in, and it was going to take a long time for me to ever give it to anybody ever again. 


	45. I got chains and you got wings

“You need to get yourself back out there, Frankie my darling,” Matt said to me as I sighed into a mocha that I did not even want. My friends had tried desperately to cheer me up over the last couple of weeks but that was seeming to be impossible at a time of year when everybody else was so happy. Being in the first week of December meant people were excited and all fucking loved up everywhere I looked, and it also did not help that both of our birthdays were in a couple of weeks. December meant nothing if you were not happy, it was just fucking cold and miserable. The sky was tainted a permanent dull grey, a pathetic fallacy for my sorry, miserable life. Gerard had stuck to his word, and we had gone back to being friends. We had cut down the time we spent together just like before, only seeing each other on Friday nights. When we lay on that bed, the distance between us was bigger than ever as the conversation was always so forced and awkward. It had hurt me when he had gone back to Amber as if nothing was ever wrong, but I couldn’t blame him. Where I needed solitude, he needed affection. Amber was everything he was supposed to find, beautiful, outgoing and I really think she did love him. It was fun to fuck about I guessed, but we could have never of been anything more than casual if he could never accept that part of himself. I think, in the end, I was just a warm pair of arms to hold him. Being with me was exciting and dangerous to him, but that lifestyle was never going to be sustainable now, was it?

“I don’t really want to,” I sighed.

“Come on! Look, I set you up a Tinder account and I put the preference to boys and girls because I know you still don’t really know what you want!”

“Matt, that’s sweet but-“

“I’m not having that, now come and sit with me and Haz and swipe!”

I sighed again, but this time in defeat as I went over to sit on the same side as my friends. It was difficult to find somebody new because each person I compared to Gerard. Saying that, letting Matt take control of an app I would never in a million years take seriously was kind of funny. 

“See, this one likes dogs, you like dogs!” Harry said excitably.

“Yeah, because she looks like a fucking dog!” Matt replied snidely, earning a slap on the arm from both of us.

“You’d still fuck her though,” Harry giggled at our over cocky friend. Matt was not evil, he just liked to pretend he was as some sort of defence mechanism.

“Probably,” he shrugged. “Wouldn’t you fuck her James, if you were straight obviously?” He thrust the device in James’ face, who clearly would not be interested in the girl with the tight bandage dress.

“I don’t think so. If I was straight I’d probably want like a cool girlfriend, some music girl probably,” he replied.

“You’re only saying that because you like Frank!” Matt said, earning another slap from Harry. “What? It’s true!”

“I must have a type then,” he shrugged cooly, Matt’s words no longer bothered him ever since Gerard and I had become friends again and nothing more. It really was like things had gone back to how they were before, Gerard vaguely stopping by, but my time mainly being taken up by soccer and my friends. Just because things had ended between us, I wasn’t going to just jump on James like the others expected because I still loved Gerard. Like I said though, things had gone back to the way they were before, and I just admired him from a distance again. 

“Nah, I’m not having this,” Matt said loudly. “Nathan!” He hollered just at the moment Nathan walked past our table with his new friends. It was sad in a way, he had become absorbed by Joe and the rest, spending an increasing amount of time with them all. He still saw us though, making time for us a few times a week. It was a little cruel to mention, but I didn’t particularly care that I was maybe losing him to Joe because ever since he’d taken Gerard from me, nothing else could compare. Joe corrupting Gerard was like an explosion,  Nathan was more just like a car backfiring. 

“Yeah?” He said separating from Ed and Jesse as they made their way over to their table. I tried to ignore the way that Gerard followed him to our group filled me with dread because, after all, we were friends and I should want him there.

“Would you fuck this girl?” He showed him the phone. I hated this toxic masculine environment, but in High School, it was almost like be a bully or be bullied. Obviously, I had a line with it all, and I was not proud of it, but the crude descriptions of people that Matt gave sometimes sucked me up in laughter too. Gerard did not show any emotion though, apart from a forced half smile in my direction which I only returned just as awkwardly. 

“Nah,” Nathan laughed. “Matt, you need to get a life, bro, you’re gonna be buying that premium Tinder description soon!”

“It’s not my Tinder! It’s Frank’s!”

“Oh then definitely not! If you wanna be with a girl Frank, you need someone smaller than you because she’d just dominate you, look at her!” Nathan laughed. It was awkward, I knew they were all itching to make jokes about that being what I wanted, but they wouldn’t, not with Gerard stood there. He looked as if he wanted the ground to open up and swallow him whole as if he suddenly regretted his decision to come over to us in the first place.

“Erm, I gotta go, Amber’s waiting,” he shuffled his feet, glaring at the floor. “See you later everyone, erm, bye Frank.”

“See,” Matt shrugged, whispering to me.

“See what?” I frowned.

“I guarantee you he’s jealous, did you see his face?”

“He is not jealous!” I blushed profusely, “I think he just feels awkward that you all knew that we did stuff together!”

“Nah, that’s a look of jealousy.”

“We’re just friends! Honestly, we’ve not even fucking hugged since we called it off!”

“Really? Not even an accidental hook-up?” He asked his eyes wide, still speaking too quietly for the others to hear.

“Nah.”

“Well fuck me, I owe Harry a tenner!”

“Why?”

“We had a bet that you two were definitely still fucking!”

“No, Matt! I told you we're just friends, and I’m happy with that!”

“Are you, though?”

“Yes!” I replied genuinely. “I need him in my life somehow, but I just can’t stand being in love with him anymore, it fucking hurts too much.”

“Fair enough, bit gay though,” he smirked.

“Oh, baby, that is not the gayest thing about that topic,” I rolled my eyes at him resulting in a mini play fight breaking out between us.

 

When I was with my friends, I felt normal again. The muted sadness was always going to be there, for a while anyway, but they made me forget. It was being alone with Gerard which was the problem. I was an addict who had quit cold turkey, and although I had gone through the initial detox of shaking out of desperation for him, it didn’t mean the cravings had gone away. Last term when we had learnt about addictions, Mrs Wisher had told us that they never really go away. You could stay away from heroin for 20 years, but it never meant that got easier to resist. Psychology class was the second hardest thing I had to do, the first being alone with him on those Friday nights of course. In Psychology, I did not have Kenny gushing about Maisie to distract me, nor James singing Brit-pop in my ear, I was alone with him and his scrutinising gaze. 

“Hi,” he mumbled, fidgeting with a pencil as I slid next to him at our desk.

“Sup, _bro_ ,” I nodded. The platonic endearments were somewhat forced, but it stopped me wanting to call him baby.

“Not a lot, just in Psych class,” he responded. “Obviously you know that though, because you’re here too.”

“Yep,” I nodded.

“So… Tinder?”

“Yep,” I said again.

“I didn’t know Tinder was your thing.”

“Well, it wasn’t, I just thought maybe I should try it.”

“Cool, yeah, so cool!” He said a little loudly. “I’m really happy you’re looking for someone.”

“Thank you.”

“Well, what are you looking for?”

“Gerard,” I cringed, “we don’t have to do this, yano? We can talk about something else like I’m finally getting driving lessons!” He had been badgering me to learn how to drive for the longest time, but I had only mentioned it to stop the intrusive questions.

“Frank, you’re my best friend! Of course, I wanna hear about any erm.. people you want to be with!”

“I dunno then, maybe like dark hair,” I looked awkwardly as his dark locks and changed my train of speech quickly. “Maybe like blue eyes, a tan,” I shrugged, lying through my fucking teeth.

“Oh, that is awesome! You’ll have to let me know if you find someone.” His response was almost robotic, and I could tell it made him awkward. I knew he did not still care about me, but conversations about romance had died between us. He didn’t even mention girls to me anymore, choosing to talk about anything but. 

“Will do,” I pretended to get distracted by writing the title of the class in my textbook.

“That’s cool you’re driving soon though, I’ll have to take you to a car park soon erh… to practice driving of course!”

 

——

 

“The clutch, Frank!” He screeched as his precious, expensive car jolted forward.

“Sorry,” I slammed on the breaks sending us both forward and almost through the window. Instead of freaking out like I thought he would, he just collapsed laughing, enticing me in with his laughter. It wasn’t long before we were both in hysterics at my poor attempt of driving. My stomach hurt and my eyes were streaming with laughter, but it appeared he was the same. For the first time since that night in my room, the vibe between us was not forced and more like how it used to be.

“Can I not just drive an automatic?” I whined.

“No!” He snapped, “automatics are boring, Frank! You can’t even kick back in an automatic!”

“What the fuck is a kickback?” I frowned.

“I’ll show you later, bug, for now, you gotta master actually moving without stalling!”

“It’s hard! It’s not my fault your cars a pile of shit!”

“Hey! Don’t diss my baby!” He scowled at me. “Trust me, Frank, if you can’t drive an Audi you might as well give up driving because they’re like the easiest cars, man!”

“Maybe I just need a better teacher,” I toyed with him, earning a punch on my arm. I retaliated by doing it back as we soon got caught up in a play fight. It was awkward, we were both strapped in our seats but maybe that was a good thing because being on a bed or something would have been a whole different story. Things got intense for a second when he pretended to slap me but instead cupped my cheek, until I turned my head and bit his thumb.

“Ow!” He squealed, clutching it to his chest.

“I told you, don’t start on me,” I smirked as we both collapsed in our seats laughing. 

“Now from the top! Remember, clutch and THEN the gas!”

I was shocked when he had turned up to my house at midnight on a Thursday night and insisted I got in. I couldn’t lie and say I wasn’t hopeful when he took me to that very carpark we’d hooked up in a couple of months back, but that wasn’t about that now. Instead, he tossed me his car keys and got out claiming he was going to teach me to drive once and for all. I didn’t even know why I hadn’t bothered to learn, it was probably just out of laziness and the fact I liked him giving me lifts everywhere just to spend time with him. Gerard’s car was his most prized possession, so why he was letting an inexperienced fool anywhere near it, I had no clue. It was kinda fun though, and I must admit that the stupid car he adored so much was growing on me.

“Well congrats, bug, you managed to put it into second gear without stalling but if this is anything to go by,” he tapped the display showing the temperature was plummeting below 0, “I say we have to go before it gets icy and we’re stuck here all night.”

“ _Wow_ ,” I said sarcastically, “if you don’t wanna spend all night with me, that’s fine just say!”

“Oh, bug, you know I wanna spend all night with you,” he chuckled darkly, “I just know there’s a blizzard coming anytime soon and I don’t fancy being stuck in the car when it’s freezing!” 

“Well, we finish school for Christmas tomorrow so you’ll just have to bring me back in the day!”

“Sure thing, if you haven’t fucked up my car,” he smirked, nudging me in the process.

 

“Where are you going?” I frowned as he took the slip road to the motorway instead of towards the roundabout to the village in which we lived. 

“Fancied a drive,” he smiled, not dragging his eyes away from the stretched out road ahead of us. He looked more enticing than ever, amber street lights shining on his face with speed as he drove faster and faster. Once we were on the motorway, he put his hand on the gear stick and forced it into a lower gear, making the car momentarily shudder before shooting us forward at such a speed it made me dizzy with adrenaline. There was no one else on the road at this stupid hour apart from the delivery trucks we were passing, it was like our own private concrete wonderland.

“That’s a kickback,” he smirked.

“Oh, I see the appeal,” I nodded, leaning my head back on the seat trying to focus on the smoky, ebony sky whizzing by and not his beauty. 

 

We drove around for hours listening to our old favourite songs and having conversations about pointless Area 51 conspiracy theories. I was saddened when he finally pulled up outside of my house, but I wasn’t about to invite him to stay the night. I knew he could handle it, but I didn’t think I was ready for platonic bed sharing just yet. Besides, I still had school in the morning and the clock was threatening half past 3.

“I had fun tonight, Franks,” he beamed at me as we were saying our goodbyes.

“Me too,” I sighed happily.

“I haven’t laughed like that in ages, yano?”

“Me neither,” I agreed truthfully.

“I told ya, you make all those thoughts stop.”

“What thoughts?” I frowned.

“Never mind,” he smiled, “right, get to bed because I need you in school tomorrow. I am not doing those stupid Psychology Christmas tasks without you! Like, when will Mrs Wisher learn you can put a Santa hat on Freud all you want, it doesn’t make it cute!”

“Oh, where’s your Christmas spirit?” I smirked at him, ruffled his hair and got out of the car.

 

As I snook into my house alone that night, I felt weird. For the first time in weeks, I didn’t feel anger towards him. My mind wasn’t overplaying him being with Amber for once, instead, I felt peace. I still loved him in a way that you should not love your best friend, but tonight just reminded me that his friendship was still enough for me. I crawled into bed with a melancholy sadness, happiness and hurt making my heart ache with hope. I think for the first time in a while, I slept with a smile on my face, despite the misery. 

 


	46. My little runaway

“ _Merry Christmas, I wrapped it up and sent it with a note saying I loved you I meant it. Now I know what a fool I’ve been but if you kissed me now I know you’d fool me again_ ,” I watched Joe sing at the top his lungs to the music that was playing in the canteen. The music was supposed to be an end of year treat, but I just saw it as another way for Joe to show off. If the attention wasn’t on him two seconds, he found a way to make it shift. I took the opportunity to look over at Gerard, who looked a bit like shit. He was still beautiful, but his eyes looked sunken and tired, his trembling hands made him seem on edge. I supposed I didn’t look much better though, we had both gotten a ridiculously small amount of sleep. Even when he dropped me back home, we had Facetimed each other until we both fell asleep and the call was ended by my phone losing charge. It was weird seeing his face asleep, even if it was through a camera, because it reminded me of how things were. They weren’t like that anymore though, and our platonic FaceTime calls were going to have to be enough for me.

“Thank fuck for that,” Gerard sighed, collapsing in the seat next to mine in Psychology.  
“For what?” I queried.  
“Joe’s horrible singing voice down my ear all fucking lunch time!” He whined. “I have such a headache and he kept calling me a mardy cunt.”  
“You want a paracetamol?” I asked.  
“Nah, I’m okay thank you.”  
“Are you though?” I frowned, seeing how jumpy he was. I had been mistaken earlier, he wasn’t just tired, there was something more than that.  
“Yes!” He replied, his voice high and irate.  
“Are you sure?”  
“Frank! I am fine!” He snapped.  
“Okay, I-“  
“Are you coming over tonight?”   
“Erm,” I said awkwardly. “I can’t, man, It’s just Kenny and Maisie invited us all the cinema.”  
“Oh, that’s cool. What are you going to see?”  
“Just that new Christmas movie,” I replied feeling saddened at the way his face dropped. “I would have said you can come but we kind of got two for one on the tickets already and Maisie gets in for free because she works there so-“  
“Nah, it’s cool man!” He forced a smile. “I’ll probably see Amber then.”  
“Okay?” I replied as if it was a question. He rarely mentioned his girlfriend to me, but when he did it felt as if he was speaking a language I could not understand. Before, I would have gone out my way to make sure Gerard was invited, especially to stop him seeing a girl, but it felt a little weird just bringing my friend along now the context between us had changed.  
“What you doing tomorrow night?” He finally asked after an awkward silence.  
“Me and James are going to that Christmas market that’s come into town.”  
“Oh, I thought we were meant to go together?”  
“I erm, kinda promised I’d go with James. I thought you'd wanna go with Amber or your friends anyway!”  
“Yeah, erm, totally!” He agreed.

Despite the lesson supposed to be doing a fun task to celebrate our last lesson before the Christmas holidays, Gerard was acting as if he was partaking in a sponsored silence. Every time I tried to speak to him, he met me with a hummed response and a forced smile, choosing to sit on his phone hidden under the table rather than helping me with the task we had been given. The guy who had made me cry with laughter last night had disappeared completely, and in his place was someone who could not even give me fucking eye contact.

I thought that would be the last time I would see him until his birthday in a weeks time, but he grabbed my arm after class.  
“You want a lift home? It’s getting kinda cold,” he asked me probably because he felt like he should, not because he wanted to.  
“Ah thanks, G, but we're getting the bus straight to town!”  
“I can still drive you-“  
“It’s okay, honestly! There’s too many of us to fit in your car.”  
“Well, I meant you but-“  
“G, I really gotta go!” I said as I felt my phone buzz for the 5th time with Matt pestering me why I wasn’t already at the bus stop. “If you need me, text me!” I called as I ran off down the hallway.

The cinema was fun, the food we ate was good and the laughter was flowing, but there was still something missing.  
“So, how do you know Gerard?” Matt frowned, shoving crisps down his throat that he had just bought from the vending machine, despite the meal we had just attended. He had directed his question to Maisie, something we had all been wondering but no one else having the guts to ask.   
“Ah, he dated my friend for a bit.” She beamed at us as if her words didn’t cut me up. “They ended on good terms though, so we still go to parties and stuff.”  
“No offence, but you don’t seem like a party kind of gal!” Matt replied.  
“Matt!” Kenny glared, putting his arm around Maisie protectively. They made me fucking sick.   
“What? I meant it in a good way!”  
“Well, I just went to be with my friends really, it’s not really my scene, especially not now,” she shot her wide, deep blue eyes at Kenny as he nuzzled into her cheek. How the fuck had Kenny got into a relationship before any of us? I sat there bitterly, wishing the bus would just fucking hurry up. The air was so cold that it stung as they wrapped up together, whispering things we weren’t invited to hear in between innocent kisses.   
“Stop staring at them, man!” James smirked as I bitterly eyed up my happy friend and his new girlfriend. They were sweet together, her straw-coloured hair expertly curled in tight ringlets and tiny frame being everything Kenny could have ever wished for. She only had a small denim jacket on as well, sharing Kenny’s oversized coat with him to bring them closer together.  
“They make me wanna hurl,” I rolled my eyes at them, out of envy, not real hatred.  
“You’re so salty, Frank!” He giggled.  
“Love is stupid, fuck love!”   
“The person I like doesn’t like me back, but I’m still hopeful about it!”  
“Erm,” I blushed feeling embarrassed he had not yet given up on me. I still stood by the fact that I didn’t think he liked me, he just thought he did. “The person you like didn’t have a secret girlfriend he was fucking behind your back for 3 months!”  
“Well, I hate to tell, I told you so,” he shrugged.  
“If I wasn’t too cold to walk away from you right now, I totally would,” I glared at him as I desperately tried to gather my jacket tighter around myself.  
“I told you to bring your big coat!” He gestured down to his own oversized parker I had never been more envious of.  
“Yeah well,” I shivered with only thin cotton to shelter me from the harsh winds. The bus stop was barely sheltered, and the bus was late, things couldn’t get much worse.  
“Come here,” he rolled his eyes at me, unzipping his coat and pulling me into it. I wanted to pull away from the closeness, but at the same time, it was nice. I didn’t know if I was being warmed from the cosy jacket he had wrapped around us both or the affections, but I was too selfishly enjoying it to stop it. Instead, I wrapped my arms around his waist, stealing his warmth as I rested my head on his shoulder.  
“James have you got the- oh shit sorry!” Matt said quickly. “I’ll leave you guys alone.”  
“What?” Harry peered over.  
“They’re having a moment, we should stop invading!” He giggled like a child turning back to Nathan and Harry.  
“No!” I said quickly.  
“Yeah, yeah!” Matt shook me off.  
“I’m just cold!” I grumbled.  
“Wouldn’t be the first friend that’s kept you warm, right, Frank?”

———

If I was cold the night before, then what I felt at soccer the next morning was indescribable. Dragging myself from my lovely, warm bed at 6:30AM was absolute Hell on earth, but it was the last practice until the New Year so I thought I ought to make the effort.

We all stood there shivering so much that our knees knocked together before Grimshaw called it quits an hour earlier than he was supposed to. He had a fair reason to though because the darkness I woke up to this morning never went away, the sky a depressing grey colour. The swelling sky that had been building up for a few weeks finally seemed to burst however as fat snow droplet landed on my nose just as I was helping to pick up the cones.  
“GUYS!” Kenny said in excitement, “It’s snowing!” Seeing him jump up in the air and clap filled me with a little joy, despite hating the current weather myself. I perhaps wouldn't have hated it if I wasn’t miserable and bitter, but the snow wasn’t fun when you were on your own, it was just a hindrance.  
“Right, boys!” Grimshaw blew his whistle. “Get home before the weather gets worse!” He tried to shelter his eyes from the increasing speed of the snow. “Have a good Christmas, but don’t forget your fitness! I’ll see you all in January for the semi-finals!”   
Everyone turned to leave, and I tried to do the same, but he pulled on my arm to keep me there.  
“Frank! Can I have a word please?” He asked. Ever since he had found out about me and Gerard, he had been a little bit awkward around me. It was like he didn’t know what to say without putting his foot in it. I hadn’t bothered to tell him that he was not going to be an issue anymore, I just hoped he had figured that by the way that Gerard had stopped coming to practice.   
“I’m cold!” I whined.  
“I’ll drive you home,” he tempted me with, seeing the way my teeth chattered and using it to his advantage.  
“Fine,” I grumbled and followed him to the warmness of his car.

I guess not having a wife or children had its perks in a way, it meant that all of his spare income was spent on his car. Usually, an E class Mercedes would have left me indifferent, but I had never been more grateful for the heated seats and blasting warm air coming from the vent.   
“You wanna coffee?” He smiled at me.  
“Sure,” I agreed as he began to drive to the wrong way towards my house and towards Starbucks. Being with Grimshaw wasn’t awkward, I had known him since the second day I had been born and up until I had gotten too old, I had referred to him as an Uncle. The guy had been my dads best man in his wedding to my mom, and that promise of being best friends forever extended to being protective over me apparently. I really did get on well with him, I just wished he could understand that I wasn’t a little boy anymore. I knew he struggled to grasp the concept of being in love with your best friend, himself and my father spending their youths chasing girls together, not each other. Gerard and I had never been like them though, even before all of this cracked off. Grimshaw and my father were like exactly the same person, almost like clones of each other, but Gerard and I filled in each other's weaknesses. I was a loud mouth, he was quiet, he was artistic and I was athletic; it just worked. Despite our differences, I would never get on with someone quite as much as I did with him. He was the only person who could make me collapse on the floor in laughter but also the only one who could make me break down in tears.

I clutched the cappuccino he had just bought me to my chest, enjoying the warmth it spread beneath my skin under my soccer shirt.   
“So,” he said, pulling out of the Starbucks drive-thru and back towards the road to my house. “What’s the latest?”  
“The latest?” I giggled, “since when did you turn into Perez Hilton?”  
“Cheeky git,” he smirked at me. “You know what I mean!”  
“Nope,” I shrugged.  
“I haven’t seen Gerard hanging around in a while, I got kinda used to him butting in on our practices to stare at you!”  
“Erh, that’s over now,” I mumbled.  
“Oh?” He replied coming across more shocked than he meant to.  
“Yeah, we decided to just be friends again.”  
“How come?”  
“We just wanted different things. Like, he wasn’t ready to be with a boy and I wasn’t just willing to be something on the side.”  
“Well, Frank, I didn’t even know you wanted to be with a boy, to be honest…”  
“We don’t have to do this,” I groaned, trying to think of an escape route out of the car that was speeding down the dual carriageway.   
“Look, you know I see you as my own! I just wanna be there for you if you don’t feel ready to tell your dad any of this!”  
“I don’t know, okay? I’ve only ever really liked him. I find people attractive and everything, but like I’ve only ever liked him properly,” I blushed, the words sounding awkward in front of a man who was practically family to me. He was right though, I could tell my friends all I wanted, but there was nothing like mature advice, even when it was not going to be in Gerard’s favour.   
“That’s okay!” He beamed, “I don’t care if you like boys, girls, whatever, I care that you’re being respected!”  
“Yeah, and that’s why I called it quits with him!”  
“Okay! That’s fine! Now he’s out of the picture though, how about Milan?”  
“No, Grimshaw!”  
“But-“  
“I don’t wanna go to Milan!”  
“Fine! Please don’t give up on soccer though, you’re just too good to give it all up!”  
“Thanks,” I sighed. “I couldn’t give up soccer if I tried, it’s the only thing that gets my mind off that stupid dick head!”  
“Language, Frank! But, I agree, he is a stupid dick head,” he chuckled pulling into my street.

“Frank?” He said as I went to get out of the car.  
“Yep?”  
“That boy was an idiot to let you go,” he smiled down at me, ruffling my hair in the process.  
“You have to say that,” I grinned, “you’re like family!”  
With my response, he grinned which filled me with happiness. I knew this time of year was difficult for him because he had to know his ex-wife had gotten her happy ending in the slyest of ways whilst he still spent the holidays alone, but he always had us.  
“Thanks for the lift!”  
“No problem! I’ll see you soon, kid!”

———

“Frank! James is here!” My mother called up the stairs as I was burying in my closet to find my thickest, winter coat. I was going to be prepared this time because it had been snowing on and off all day. I pulled on my bright red Liverpool FC scarf feeling it looked a little ridiculous with my plain black coat and jeans, but not particularly caring. Fuck it, I took it one step further and pulled on my thick gloves which adorned the same logo as the scarf, only being a little more subtle because they were black too.  
“Coming!” I called grabbing some cash before running down the stairs to my awaiting friend.

“Is it just you boys tonight?” My mother asked, fussing to remove a smudge on my cheek with her thumb.  
“Yep,” I attempted to duck under her mothering, but failed miserably.   
“Oh, where are the others?”   
“Busy,” I shrugged but it was a lie. The truth was, we didn’t invite the others because I had promised James some quality time. Within the group, we were obviously all close but it had always been me and him before everything started turning complicated. Since things had changed, I’d made a conscious effort to keep things as normal as possible between us. Besides, was it really so bad if I liked the attention he gave me when I felt this shitty?  
“Ah, what about G?” She frowned, never really understanding that Gerard and James had always hated each other, let alone been friendly enough to be involved in each other's plans. My mother thought that the reason Gerard had been spending less time around me recently was due to the fact that his mental health had declined again, definitely not because we’d had a sort of break up and an even more difficult friendship pact between us. As far as my mother was aware, Gerard had a girlfriend and he had done for months now. Gerard’s mom had been constantly worrying to mine at work about the increasing amount of time he had been spending in his room in isolation, so she was pestering me to make a conscious effort with him. If only she knew how hard it was for me to be around him, she wouldn’t be asking something like that of me. Besides, he was probably coked off his face, not depressed.   
“Busy,” I said again, despite not really knowing where he was. I tried not to keep track of him anymore, I’d lost too many hours of sleep to worrying about his whereabouts.   
“Alright, well have fun and be safe!”

“You look nice,” James said nervously as we began to walk to the bus stop, our gloved hands occasionally banging together awkwardly. It was an action I would not have thought twice about a few months back, but now everything always had to fucking mean something.  
“Thanks,” I cringed. “I don’t though, like, I need my hair cutting and-“  
“I like it a bit longer,” he shrugged.  
“I don’t, I look like-“ I stopped myself. I was trying to ban myself from talking about Gerard, especially the old version of him. Gerard had long ago cut all of his hair off, supporting the same basic hair cut that every other guy in my year had, but that was not something friends should care about. “Never mind.”   
“Should we have invited the others?” James asked consciously. “You know Kenny loves shit like this!”  
“Nah,” I shrugged. “I like spending time with you.”  
“Yeah?” He beamed.  
“Yeah!”

I didn’t know if I was trying to purposely trigger myself or what, but coming to a Christmas market was probably not the smartest idea when I wanted to avoid all forms of romance. Every fucking where I looked was loved up couples, under mistletoe, posing under the snow and lights or sharing mulled wine keeping each other warm. The market was something of fiction in itself honestly, hundreds of little wooden stalls selling overpriced Christmas trinkets but adorning pretty little fairy lights everywhere. My wide eyes were the only thing on show because I had my scarf pulled over my freezing cold nose and hat pulled even tighter on my head because of the ever-growing snow storm. It had been snowing all day but it had gotten significantly stronger in the past hour making it difficult to walk when the shelter of the stalls was not there.   
“Fucking freezing,” I grumbled. The sting of the snow was not quite so pleasant when you were walking with your friend, and not someone you could just cosy up to.  
“What? Frank, I can’t understand a fucking word that you are saying when you mumble under that scarf!” James giggled.  
“Cold!” I whined again, briefly moving my scarf from my mouth long enough to utter the words before retreating back to my slightly warmer haven.   
“Yeah, it probably wasn’t a good idea to come here in the middle of a blizzard was it?” He smirked throwing his arm around my shoulder. His affections did not leave me any warmer, in fact, his snow-covered coat actually left me colder. No, it was the burning pair of hazel eyes glaring at me from the bar that were leaving me hot.   
“James,” I mumbled.  
“What?”  
“Gerard’s over there,” I said barely above a whisper. My heart was quickening as he did not tear his glare of us. He fucking knew I was here, but the sadistic fuck still had his pretty girlfriend hanging off his arm. I had never directly told him how I truly felt, but he must have known after my reaction to finding out he was still seeing her. His stance was driving me into a frenzy, Amber hanging off him, completely oblivious to the way he was looking at me as if I had just pulled a gun and was about to shoot him.  
“What?” James replied, “I told you I can’t understand you when you mumble into your scarf!”  
“Gerard!” I whined again.  
“Nah, still not getting!”  
“For fuck’s sake! GERARD IS OVER THERE!” I said too loudly, cringing as I felt a strong hand on my shoulder. From the way James was glaring behind me, I could have guessed it.  
“Frank!” Gerard said pulling me into a bone-crushing hug, something we had not even entertained since turning our relationship platonic again. I cringed knowing he had just heard me mention him being here, internally cursing at myself for not just ignoring his attention-seeking actions. “What a surprise to see you here!”   
“Erm, well,” I tried to detach myself from him because it was a usually long hug for two people who were meant to be friends. “I did tell you I was going to be here… with James.”  
“Did you?” He pulled back and frowned but kept an arm around me. “I must have forgotten!”  
“Yeah, I definitely did,” I scowled.   
“Amber just wanted to come here, it’s not really my thing,” he rolled his eyes, squeezing my shoulders. I tried to ignore the way his contact made me want to relax into him and instead focused on the way the burning rage was settling back in. After the driving practice, I had almost forgotten the fact he had moved on incredibly quickly, and my anger at him had subsided a little. There was just something about the bitter sting of jealousy though flooding back with the way she was staring up at him. Yes, he had his arm around me, but with the thought of where his hands had been, I had never wanted him to be further away from me. By the looks of it, Amber also wanted to be anywhere but here. She refused to even really acknowledge me, but it was fine because Gerard had ignored James’ existence too. She had clearly not got the blizzard memo, only wearing a long-sleeve white turtle neck shirt with a brown fur gilet over the top. I may have looked ridiculous in the bright red Liverpool scarf that I almost regretted, but at least I didn’t look minutes away from hypothermia like she did.   
“Gerard,” she glared.  
“What, babe?”  
“Can we go home?”  
“Well, Frank, what are you doing? You could always come!”  
“Erm, I’m sort of out with James,” I motioned to where my friend was stood, an equally pissy look plastered all over his face.  
“I guess he can come too, we could just watch a film I dunno-“  
“Frank, no” James whined.  
“I’m sure he can make his own mind up,” Gerard glared behind me.  
“Erm, he’s right. I’m gonna stay here I think, I might see you soon though, yeah?” I responded awkwardly. I didn’t want to go back to his house and watch him and his girlfriend be all over each other, and I highly doubted that was on James’ bucket list either. Besides, I had promised James that we would look around that market and I was going to stick by my word, even if it felt as if I was getting frostbite. Gerard was more tempting than ever, fat snowflakes landing in his long lashes that I ached to wipe away, his lips a bitter red from the cold and his own gnawing of them that I longed to kiss and his hands nervous and anxious, begging to be held. Still, that was not my responsibility anymore. I would always want him, but I loved him too much to trap him inside a lifestyle he did not want. I watched as his face fell right along with the arm he had around me, looking deceptively sincere.  
“Oh, right, _awesome_!” He said. “Well, you have fun, Frank and I might see you soon!”  
“Yeah, see you later,” I pressed my lips together in some sort of forced smile as he awkwardly patted my shoulder and walked off.  
“That was weird,” James grumbled watching Gerard and Amber trudge through the snow hand in hand, eventually losing them in the bustling crowd of happy people.  
“Yeah,” I agreed, trying to ignore the way her fingers were laced in his in the way that mine used to be.

I had fun at the Christmas market, despite the cold and my momentary relapse of him. James and I walked around for hours, fascinated by warm glowing amber lights and exotic scents coming from foods I could not pronounce. We also got lost in a conversation about the future for both of us, all of our fears and regrets coming to light. I missed out telling James about the scholarship because I could not quite predict a reaction from him. He would either be extremely enthusiastic about it and tell me to go for it, which filled me with an intense unknown fear or he would tell me not to, and maybe then wanderlust would have taken over and consumed me and I would just have to let more people down. There had been a brief moment I stood below a podium looking up at a young guy with a guitar singing some song I did not know with snow falling around me that I felt at peace. The gentle whisper of the melancholy minor chords mixed in with the cheerful bustle of the stein drinking patrons made me realise I was still alive, I was still breathing. The numbness from before had consumed me, but the cold sting of snowflakes on my skin brought me back to earth for a while. I may not have been feeling elation, but at least I was feeling something.

“I had fun tonight,” James said as we prepared to part ways at the bus stop.   
“Me too,” I replied genuinely. The flush of his cheeks poking from beneath his oversized parker coat and beanie made me smile, something I had been struggling to do recently. I didn’t think anybody had caught on to my true unhappiness as I masked my days well in fake smiles and laughter, but no one saw me alone. It was when I was alone that it hit me all at once with the force of a full-speed train collision. The more I resisted my sadness in favour of being extroverted, the harder it knocked me off my feet when I thought of him with nobody for company.   
“I-“ he began, but instead stopped and pulled me into a hug. Although I was a little taken back, I greedily accepted the affection. It was difficult, I had gone from being smothered in attention in more ways than one to being completely independent again. I fucking missed his touch more than anything, those late nights thinking about him and not being able to fucking do anything about it because the memory was just too intense. James holding me was nothing more than chaste, but the warmness from his frame was giving me something I had denied myself for too long, I was just unsure of what that was. The hug was perhaps too long to be considered normal, but I was greedily accepting it anyway. I closed my eyes and tried to stop the way my mind was wondering from imagining it was a different pair of arms around me on a cold December night, saying goodnight to me at the bus stop.

I felt James’ weight shift slightly as he pulled back a little, staring down into my eyes intensely. He was not extremely tall or anything, but still inevitably towered over me making the interaction more uncomfortable. I blinked up at him, unsure of his intentions or what was even happening before he closed his eyes and inched forwards.  
“Woah,” I jumped back awkwardly. “Erm-“  
“Sorry,” he blushed. “I’m really sorry, I don’t know why I just tried to do that!”  
“Nah, it’s cool, man,” I chewed on my thumb anxiously. “I just, it’s a bit soon, yano?”  
“You don’t have to lie to me, I can take the rejection I promise,” he laughed bitterly, burning his gaze into the floor.  
“No! It’s not like that! I’m just not ready for… _that_ again!”  
“Okay,” he nodded, unsure of where to place his limbs without drawing my attention to him.  
“I think I should go,” I sighed.  
“Okay.”  
“Like I said though, maybe when I’m not so fucked up things will be different.”  
“Maybe,” he half smiled, “now get home! You look like you’re about to pass out from the cold!”  
“Whatever you say, Jam,” I rolled my eyes. As I said goodbye, I quickly leant forward and kissed his cheek to reassure him things were not weird. Well, they were weird, but things between us needed to be as fine as I could possibly make them because I wasn’t sure how I would cope without him. The press of my lips on his cheek left him flustered as if he confused me of someone with power or beauty, but the reaction still warmed my cold heart just a little.

I lay in bed that night and tried to comprehend anything going on in my dizzy, spinning brain. I felt as if I was starving and James was food being offered yet, I was still declining it. How could I be so fucking ungrateful to not want him? He was beautiful, kind and one of the greatest friends I could have ever of wished for. At the end of the day though, that’s all I could see him as, a friend. My hopeful words from earlier weren’t necessarily a lie, maybe if I wasn’t so fucked, I could have loved him. I just had to cling to that thought though, because it was all I had left of hope.

———

The next day was spent wasted. I barely arose from my bed, the worsened blizzard outside making any hope of plans futile anyway. I didn’t even want anything to do, I just wanted to wallow in my self-pity just for once. I was always the first person to preach being trapped in isolation was never healthy, but I needed the rest that it brought in that moment. Things like that were easy to preach about if you did not understand them, and oh, how wrong could I have been about the sanctuary of solitude.

It was somewhat relaxing watching the white flurry from the safety of my bed, slowly watching the dull winter sky turn to a clouded charcoal with only music and my thoughts to pass the time. My parents had been up to see me briefly throughout the day and impending night but quickly left me in my solitude when they realised I was not in my usual desperate need of conversation. I dragged myself from my room to bathe and to eat, but that was it. I felt better being clean and well-fed, finally being able to be lulled into a light sleep by the noise of the howling wind outside of my bedroom window.

I awoke to the noise of tapping on my window, almost as if the soft snow had turned to hail. For a moment, I let it happen like the noise was supposed to be there until I gained enough consciousness back to realise I was on the third floor and there should most definitely not be tapping at my window. Immediately, I was a little freaked out as I knew the repetition of the pattering was made by no accident, the haziness of lost sleep making everything more detrimental and lack rationality. Still, the curiosity in me still won as I dragged myself from my bed in which I had resided in all day, daring to poke my head out of the window to look down at the whitewashed street beneath me.

The shock that the chilled wind caused me was nothing compared to the harrowing feeling of who was throwing rocks at my window did.

“What the fuck are you doing?” I hissed into the dark night.


	47. How I wish someone had told me, don't you dare let go of Sophie

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> This is a long one sorry but I hope it explains a lot :)
> 
> The song in this chapter isn't even on youtube but it hit me on a new level to the point I listened to it about 50 times in one evening haha so if anybody wants to listen to it I have a Spotify link; 
> 
> https://open.spotify.com/track/353BSuCpRDc8euogSzMN0b?si=NP2dQuFISOu0NdAC5s7kPg
> 
> The guy who really sings that song is not Ross in this story lol it's just a coincidence their names are similar but it's a really beautiful song and I love it a lot.

**G POV-**

“Babe, are you not coming in?” Amber frowned as I dropped her off at her door. The heat radiating from inside of her house felt much more inviting than the bitterly unforgiving wind blowing from behind me, but I needed to be alone. It was not the first time the offer of her body and affection did not appear exciting to me, her touches leaving me with a dull ache compared to the sharp electricity left by another.

Friends. Who the fuck decided on the boundaries of friends? It was bullshit. He was friends with James, maybe in the same way he was with me, who fucking knew. I saw the way he slyly slid his arm around his shoulder as if he could ever have possibly known I was stood there watching them from behind the crowd. I hadn’t known what had possessed me to even follow him to that fucking facade of happiness market, but I guessed it was something I would never let myself understand.

“Nah, my mom needs me,” I lied, probably badly. Her love had kept me a little warmer, made me feel just a little better, but it was a lie. She was in love with a lie. Amber had fallen for a loud-mouthed, over cocky, arrogant make-believe person, not the low-life, cocaine-addicted manic depressive I was all too familiar with. I didn’t mean to hurt her, but really, what other option did I have? If I didn’t have their attention, then who the fuck was I anymore?

I still didn’t understand why he had pulled away from me, teasing me with the cruel taunt of those fucking friendship boundaries that I hated so much. He never told me anything with how he was feeling, always wanting to be the one to help like some over-eccentric psychiatrist, but never wanting to confess what was going on inside his own head. Maybe he had just changed his mind about us because blurring those friendship lines were never easy. I didn’t think he felt anything deeper, he’d never even alluded to it, that was just my wishful thinking. My mind was confusing, I wanted him and I could never have him and he had made it so much worse by desiring my attention but not needing my love. It didn’t matter how many times I told myself that us being together was not something which was tangible or even remotely possible, he still infiltrated my thoughts in the same way he had done for years now. The awkward tension between us was just a progeny of a now forced friendship, something I had single-handedly ruined. I knew that all he asked of me was that I was honest, but I also knew he would not have shared me. Frank was always too pure for his own good, never taking what he wanted because of a fear of hurting other people, even when people would not do the same for him. If it was the other way around, I knew Amber would not have held his feelings in view at all, which only made his selflessness both more attractive and aggravating.

The walk home was not fun, my car safely tucked away in our garage to keep it precious bodywork and traction away from this ice age. An Audi had seemed like a good idea at the time, but it’s lack of reliability in the winter weather resulted in a battle on legs with the ever-growing blizzard.

The sting of snowdrops on my face was nothing compared to the sourness of my thoughts. I had tried really fucking hard to entice him in again, but nothing worked. I could not graciously accept his rejection anymore now that I was alone in my head. I had to pretend everything was fine, he had a right to his own life and was under no obligation to ever let me into it, I knew that. That didn’t mean it didn’t hurt though. I was slowly giving up on him, I couldn’t take it any more.

The only thing that shut my stupid, malfunctioning head up was the bitter pinch of my father’s over-priced liquor. My father was at work, covering overtime requests with the bad weather bringing more injuries into the emergency room than usual, so he would not be on my case. My mother was busy somewhere too, working away in her office occupied with cases she had to read over, again and again, to find any flaws to her advantage. Nobody that was good for me had time for me anymore, was it any wonder that my I was slipping back into old habits? I mentally kicked myself for that thought, because nobody was under any obligation to ever look after me, it was just me being a fucking liability as per usual.

Like the sad, pathetic, low-life that I was, I downed too much whiskey for somebody who was drinking alone, trying to desperately warm up by the open fire. Usually, the crackling of the crisp wood my father had managed to gather before the weather made everything wet would calm me down, but right now it wasn’t enough. The heat of the fire did not warm me up in the way I had wished, instead, it made my cheeks and hands burn with a prickly sort of heat, something which was not pleasant. I didn’t need it though, I had something else to warm me up. Not only did it take the chill from my bones, but it also ripped the toxic thoughts from my head. Alcohol was supposed to be a depressant, but I didn’t find it to be one. No, instead the most depressing thing about alcohol was the inevitable sobering up as it left your bloodstream and you were tossed back into reality.

I drank so much with the image of him in my head that I made myself sick, never really consuming the liquid enough in the first place for it to turn into anything else. I had mercifully tried to keep the whiskey in my system, but once again, I had been too greedy with it as my body violently rejected it. With my throat hoarse and stomach raw, I finally stumbled into bed, the scent of him on my sheets making everything worse. I lay back in that old cardigan I had become too attached to again trying to stop the walls from spinning, but eventually giving in and leaning to the side and letting vomit dribble from my lips. I was beyond pathetic, and this wasn’t even a bad night by my standards.  
——

“Gerard you idiot, you left the fire on last night!” I felt a weight jump on me as I rudely got dragged out from my sleep. You’d think after the number of hangovers I’d had I would be an expert at handling them, I was far from that though. Hangovers to me were not some preppy little niggling headache that the media showed them to be, no they were vomit induced depressive comedowns where I had to come to terms with reality again. I hated reality and returning to it nauseous after a high only made it harder, but it was never enough to stop me from making the same mistake again. The disconnect I felt within me with each substance I consumed was just too enticing for me to ever give it all up.

“Ew, it smells of puke,” I heard my brother add as I attempted to wrap myself up in my duvet, and away from him. “Did you go out last night, bro?”  
“Mikey, fuck off,” I grumbled, my voice coming out rough like I had swallowed glass with the harshness of my gags from the night before.  
“G, get up! Me, Pete and Travie are gonna go have a snowball fight and-“  
“I thought I told you to stay away from him,” I shot up, shooting daggers at him. He paused with his utterance, shuffling his oversized glasses with his nose debating what to say. Things between us had been good for a while, but he was fucking shit at receiving social cues. If someone was locking themselves in their room, only leaving when they either had to or nobody was home, you should probably take it as they didn’t want to talk to you. Mikey was young though, still full of hope and innocence. That innocence could quickly become naivety though, making him trust dregs like Travie. His family were not people I wanted anywhere near my baby brother, and he had only proved my point more by returning home with a paralytic Pete.   
“He’s-“  
“No, Mikey. You stay away from him.”  
“Gera-“  
“Mikey, just fuck off!” I grumbled, the acid in my stomach burning up my oesophagus as I tried to swallow the impending bile that was threatening to give away my lonely secrets of the night before. I was being irritated enough by my mother’s concerns of my isolation, I didn’t need Mikey joining in on that.  
“Just maybe if you have time, you could come! Mom said you couldn’t get your car out because of the weather, so I just thought if you were bored-“  
“You thought that I’d wanna come join some kids?” I laughed snidely in his face, ignoring the way his face dropped with my utterance.   
“I just thought-“  
“Well,” I said cutting him off again. “You thought wrong, didn’t you?”  
And with that, he glared at me and retreated from my bedroom and back up to normality leaving me to sleep off the rest of my hangover.  
——-

I was awoken with a polar opposite call, literally. The vibrations of my phone ringing left me a little hopeful until I mindlessly answered it and it was not the voice I had wanted, nor expected.  
“G man,” Joe barked down the receiver, “fucking finally!”  
“What?” I grumbled.  
“I’ve rung you like a million times, are you banging or something? You’re a fucking slut bro, Amber’s been sat ringing me last night, and I had to lie and say you were with me!”  
“Why the fuck did you do that, moron?”  
“Erm, to cover your back! Best friends will lie for each other, that’s the rules. You wanna fuck other girls, that’s fine, but you gotta tell me who.”  
“I’m not with a girl!”  
“Bullshit, when are you not with a girl?”  
“I’m not! My mom needed me home because my dad was on an overnight at the hospital!”   
“Gerard, you suck at lying!”  
I wanted to scream at him that I had in fact spent the night before drinking myself into much-needed isolated oblivion, but I didn’t care to explain as to why. Joe didn’t understand things in my head, he didn’t understand the pills I took and he definitely did not get the pointless yet endless cognitive behaviour therapy sessions that I had attended. I didn’t want to talk to Joe, no, fuck that, I didn’t want to talk to anybody.  
“Yeah,” I sighed in agreement, even though he was wrong.  
“Anyway, what you up to, big man?”  
“Erh, nothing. Have you not looked outside of your window?” I frowned. Even from my tiny, high-up fucking basement window, I could see the snow.   
“Of course I have, I’m not a fucking weird hermit like you! Anyway, we’re going to Shannon’s, not out.”  
“Shannon’s?” I frowned into my phone. None of us knew how Tom had got a girl like Shannon, she was a couple of years older and a free-thinking, spiritual person, worlds away from teenage boys who still hung around on parks. She also had her own place, it was a small, poky flat but it was hers. She didn’t like us coming over though ever since one night Tom had got too close with somebody else on her sofa because Joe had pushed them together trying to be funny. For a long time, we thought it was over between them, but she really did love him, just under her conditions.  
“Yep, she’s at work and Tom’s crashing there, he fell out with his dad again,” Joe said as if one of his oldest friends parental relationship was fickle. There was a reason Tom mainly hid at his girlfriends flat and that reason was in the shape of his overbearing, alcoholic father. His brother had escaped long ago, but the guy was chained here. I guess we all had our demons hidden deeply in our closest’s, but we weren’t exactly the kind of group to share them out-loud.   
“I dunno Delo, I feel like shit,” I said truthfully.  
“Nah, you’ve ditched me enough recently, and I am fucking sick of it, you are coming!”  
“But-“  
“ _Ah-buh-buh_!” He silenced me. “Shannon’s flat. ASAP.”

The hassle of walking to Shannon’s flat in the snow was nothing compared to the agro I would have gotten if I had not made the effort at all. Joe was right, I had been neglecting him recently, favouring my own company over his. He could be cruel, blunt and rude but at the end of the day, he was one of my closest friends and I still owed him everything I had. Being Joe’s favourite was a difficult role to take on, and I still had no idea why that was me. It was though, he told me every fucking day. It had been that way since the day on the field, never letting me out of his sight long enough to develop independently, like I was some kind of pet to him. I didn’t know how to function without Joe dictating aspects of my life, and the one time I had defied him with Frank, it had left me scarred. As much as his opinion sometimes stung, I knew Joe knew what was best for me, he always had.

“How come you’re not even drinking?” Ross peered over to my glass of water I had as it contrasted to their tins of cider.   
“My stomach is fucking raw,” I complained trying to avoid the smell of ethanol because I did not trust myself not to gag at it, even something as weak as a Kopparberg.   
“Oh, who were you out with last night then?”  
“Ah, erm, Frank,” I lied not having the guts to tell him that I was in fact drinking by myself, like an absolute loner.   
“Oh awesome, how is he? I haven’t seen him in forever!”  
“He’s doing really good,” I said through gritted teeth. It wasn’t a lie, he was doing fucking brilliantly without me, and that thought was bittersweet.   
“You should bring him over again soon, I’ve been meaning to talk to him for ages now because I was supposed to go to their football practices.”  
“Why didn’t you?”  
“Ah, I got nervous,” he mumbled.  
“You got nervous about asking Frank for help?”   
“Yeah, I just mean, he’s cool, isn’t he? He’s the captain, I just thought maybe he wouldn’t want me and he was just being nice.”  
“Nah, he wouldn’t do that. You should go for it, bro.”  
“You think?”  
“Yes!”  
“Okay… I’ll go for it if you tell me what’s wrong,” he hesitated a little before saying it, but the words rang in the air clear and coherent. I looked around the room nervously tracking any spying ears, but to no avail. Joe was too busy making a move on the girl he had brought over, and Jesse, Tom and Ed were too busy laughing at his sleaziness to pay any mind to mine and Ross’ conversation.   
“What do you mean?” I giggled nervously, my laughter simply being a panicked response, because I was definitely not finding his intrusive question humorous.  
“I told you G, you don’t have to lie to me!”  
“I honestly don’t have a fucking clue what you are chatting about, Rossy,” I sighed, rolling my eyes at him as if he were pathetic.   
“You do though. You’ve been really quiet recently, I dunno, you just seem down!”  
“I’m not down! I’m just tired,” I attempted to shrug him off.  
“Gerard,” he almost groaned in frustration. “You can trust me, I promise!”  
“There’s nothing wrong though!”  
“Okay, well, how about you come out with me tonight?”  
“I dunno, I have plans-“  
“Doing what?”  
Sitting in my room alone feeling sorry for myself.  
“My mom needs-“  
“No, Gerard, please!” He begged. “I wanna show you something.”  
“What’s that?” I frowned.  
“I just wanna trust you with something, so you believe me when I say that you can trust me back.”  
“Okay _Mr Ambiguous_ ,” I rolled my eyes.

I was preparing to go home as the sky began to turn a darker grey and Shannon’s shift got closer to finishing. Tom had started to become tense and more on edge as the clock ticked closer to 6 PM, the time of Shannon’s return. I pretended to protest like the others when he finally kicked us out to clear away the cigarette butts and the empty cans, but in all honesty, my social limit had run out. I’d put on the brave face I always wore in front of them, being too loud and too cocky so I could join in with their harsh jokes when in reality, I felt like crawling away into an abyss. I had to be more careful, Ross had noticed and it would only be a matter of time before Joe did too, and that would not have been pretty.  
“Oi, thanks for that,” Joe said once we were alone. His sarcastic comment was met with a harsh punch on my arm, one that was just a little bit too vicious to be considered banterous.   
“Ow, cunt,” I rubbed at where his fist had landed. “What was that for?”  
“You cockblocked me!”  
“What?” I scowled.   
“Sarah!”  
“Who?”  
“The girl that you were literally just sat with, the one who you were all over!”  
“Oh, for fuck's sake, Delo!” I rolled my eyes at him. “I don’t care who you fuck, man!”  
He was referring to the girl in the year below us that he had roped into spending her Sunday afternoon with us with hopes of getting laid. I could tell from her bored expression that she was not into him, her preened self too far removed to feel at home in a room full over over-loud, tipsy boys.   
“She liked you,” he pushed me again.  
“What?”  
“She said she didn’t wanna come back with me unless you were going to be there. So, you stole my girl, yet again!”  
“That’s bullshit, Joe,” I grumbled. I was sick and tired of people using me, so what if I used them back a little? I had come to terms with girls not liking me for me a long time ago, they just wanted the attention it brought. My self-esteem had never been lower, I didn’t need somebody else using me for their own gain yet again.   
“Nah, this is bullshit! You’ve been in a weird mood recently, and I don’t get what your deal is!”  
“I haven’t got a deal,” I sighed. Trying to talk to Joe when he was in this mood was futile, he would not even listen, let alone take on board anything I said to him.   
“Yes! You’ve barely been around me recently!”  
“I just… I’ve been busy Joe,” I replied nervously.  
“Well, make yourself unbusy!”  
“I- okay,” I agreed, again, it being futile to argue with him.  
“Sometimes Gerard, I think I should have gone for someone a little less pretty to join us,” he squeezed my cheek like an endearing touch but did it too hard for it to be an act of affection. The way he smiled at me as he pinched me made me nervous like I was being stared down by a sociopathic narcissist.   
“Erm, sorry?” I said unsure of what he even meant.  
“Anyway, I’m gonna bounce I’ve got a backup lay, yano?”  
“Ah, sound, who?”  
“Hannah.”  
“Hannah who?” I frowned.  
“Amber’s friend Hannah! I know I think that Frank is a little dick head, right, but I gotta thank him for breaking her heart. He left her nice and insecure for me!” He smirked evilly.  
“Joe, don’t make it awkward for me, man! She’s Amber’s best friend!”  
“Nah, I let your little friend have dibs on her first, but he pissed that chance away! Now it’s my turn!”  
“Joe-“  
“I’m off, G! Love ya!” He spoke loudly over me, smiling before he turned down an alleyway and leaving me staring after him.

I almost drifted off into the solitude of my daydreams with my music blaring into my headphones when my phone buzzed. I had forgotten I had promised myself to somebody other than myself this evening probably due to the matter of disinterest for the plans. I felt bad, Ross was always a good friend to me, but that didn’t mean I wanted to commit my whole night into avoiding his intrusive questions about how I was doing. I knew he meant well, but it sure didn’t feel like it. Anybody trying to get into my brain immediately threatened me, even when they were just trying to help.

Still, he text me some address on the other side of town that I had never heard of and refused to answer any more of my questions. I thought about not showing, but something in the pit of my stomach demanded I dragged myself from the dark sanctuary of my bedroom.

Ross should have been honoured honestly, my own car not even able to make it out of the garage in this horrendous storm, let alone to the other side of town. I had to practically beg my dad to drive me in his Range Rover, which he very nearly refused after another gruelling shift. That wasn’t even the worst of it though, the worst was sitting in the car with just myself and the man who was responsible for putting me on this God awful planet in the first place. The space between me and my dad had never felt greater, forced conversations about the weather and roadworks seeming phatic with the deepness going on inside my own head.

“G,” my dad began apprehensively, meaning it was never going to be a conversation I was going to enjoy.  
“What?” I replied bluntly trying to make it clear to him I was not in the mood for another conversation about the way the traffic lights on Queens Street really needed to re-synched because they like, _totally_ took too long.   
“You upset Mikey earlier, I just wanted you to know.”  
“When is Mikey not upset with me?”  
“When you’re not cruel to him!”  
“Here we go again,” I muttered to myself sinking into the chair.   
“Gerard!” My father snapped harshly causing me to jump a little. “I know things have been tough for you, but you can’t keep wasting your life like this!”  
“You don’t have to do this again, dad, I get it! I get your first child was a screw up compared to your second one, I let you and mom down, I’ve heard it all before!”  
“Don’t talk to me like that! Me and your mother are worried about you!”  
“Are you?” I glared at him. I was just a smudge on his life, a mistake, not the athletic, medical or law inclined son he had wished for. He had that now though with Mikey, meaning anything he wanted, he fucking got. I was happy to self destruct on my own if only my over-bearing parents weren’t making that a fucking impossible task. Inside my family, I had always felt like an alien, the only one not destined for greatness, only made more apparent by my perfect brother and his perfect little life.  
“Yes! You’re just being too selfish to realise that people care about you!”  
“I can walk from here,” I snapped as we approached the second set of long-winded lights.  
“Gerard, don’t you dare get out of this car! You’ll catch your death!”  
“Thanks for the lift, Dad,” I called back at him as I got out of the car giving him no choice but to drive away into the darkness at a snail's pace to avoid the black ice. I wished he had held in his issues with me and my brother for just a little while longer because, I was still a 5-minute walk from the dodgy address Ross had given me, and 5 minutes in the snow felt like a lifetime. I had underestimated how bitterly cold it had gotten, only wearing a thin, brown leather jacket pulled over my white T-shirt. All though the streets were not flooded with people, most of them being smart enough to hide inside their homes in this temperature, those who were out all had big winter coats and boots on, only making me look more ridiculous.

I trudged through the thick, freezing cold slush beneath my feet, my new trainers drenched and ruined, to end up outside a sketchy looking doorway. I glanced at the text Ross had sent me again double checking I had the address right, fully expecting to be in the wrong place.  
I wasn’t though, there in sleazy, red neon lighting about the doorway was the word “CHAPLIN’S”, the same place Ross had told me to come to. The light blinked with age, not exactly enticing me into the already dingy looking bar. I had never even been on this street before, let alone to this place. The area of town I was in was reserved for people not like myself, piercing shops and vintage clothing stalls being littered around me like some kind of indie parallel universe. I wished I belonged somewhere like this, but I just simply didn’t. Still, I had trudged here with a major effort, so I thought I may as well find out what the fuck Ross was on about. I apprehensively walked down the set of decaying looking steps as if I was walking into some sort of B rate Cavern Club, the strong smell of beer and cigarettes matching the aesthetic of the building. I barely trusted the ceiling not to cave in, let alone the intimidating looking people crowding into the tiny box room. It was a Sunday night for fuck's sake, but it seemed all the alternative people had been crammed into a tiny basement bar tonight. Unlike the rest of town, there were no Christmas decorations thrown around the room, instead, it was decorated with ripped up beer mats and empty pint glasses.

**\- Where r u?**

I text Ross, waiting at least 10 minutes for a response. I had never felt more out of place in my whole entire life, and this definitely didn’t seem to be somewhere that Ross would be hiding in. To cover my anxieties the new environment brought me, I pulled out Dean’s ID I somehow managed to get away with and brought the first thing the scary looking barmaid offered me. I had never heard of any of the extravagant ales, nor the million different flavours or gin they sold, but I didn’t dare tell her. As the woman poured my drink, I could not help but to admire her massive chest piece tattoo of a bird, her largely stretched ears and unusual dark makeup. I had surrounded myself with normal people for so long, I had almost forgotten that other people existed. They did though, and they all appeared to be hiding in that dingy hole.

I almost gave up on the idea and submitted to the more attractive one of going back to my room all alone until Ross finally text me back. I get the signal was not great under the ground, but it was not like he wasn’t expecting me.

**\- Sorry, got caught up. See you in 5.**

I sighed to myself draining the last dregs of my beer, wiping the foam from my lips before sliding the empty glass on the bar.  
“Another?” The interesting barmaid from before asked me despite there being a bustle of people before me. She stared at me intensely with her almost black eyes, rooting me to the spot. I wanted to shake my head and deny the next beverage, but something inside me made me nod in agreement.  
“Great! You’re just in time for the open mic!”  
“Open mic?”  
“Oh honey, you’re not a usual here, are you?”  
“Was it obvious?” I laughed snidely motioning down to my normal looking clothes.  
“Yeah,” she smiled as she began to pour me another drink. “Basically, people come here to play their music, it’s pretty great!”  
“Oh, awesome,” I nodded.  
“Sorry though, I don’t think that you’re going to discover any of your little rap artists down here,” she laughed at me, expertly tipping the pint to such an angle so that it would not overfill.  
“What makes you think that’s me?”   
“Oh, just a guess, sweetie,” she passed me the drink but eyed me up and down in the process.  
“You shouldn’t judge someone on their looks,” I smirked back at her.  
“You, the boy wearing an outfit straight out of a Topman window display is telling me, Wednesday Addams of steroids not to judge on looks?” She raised a perfectly arched eyebrow at me.  
“Fair enough,” I shrugged. “How much do I owe you again?”  
“Ah, it’s on the house,” she grinned at me, disappearing to serve somebody else before I could even thank her.

The lights went low around me as people erupted, alerting me to whatever was happening on the tiny stage at the front of the room. I struggled to see anything at all, bodies all in the way to get closer to the stage. The atmosphere in the room was indescribable, it was like I finally understood all those once overlooked Frank Turner lyrics of playing to a crowd of people who did not know your name, but were just there to hear your music. I wished I possessed the confidence to even contemplate doing something like an open mic night, but for now, I was happy to stand and listen to something loud enough to block out my thoughts. I was still overly numb, but I guessed I was in a room full of people who felt the same way. This room was full of people who thought like I did, missing someone they could never have, but just aching for those brief moments they could forget about it.

The first note of a guitar rang throughout the room. It was over loud and a little shrill with the cheap PA system it was projected out of, but I felt the pang of it echo in my hollow chest as the chords began to progress. I had given up trying to look at the stage, the bustle of people making it impossible, but their claps and applauds making it worth it by making me feel just a little less alone.

The tune being played by the unknown artist started off deceptively with a major chord but was quickly chased off by minor chords to a slow strumming pattern. The bitterness of the instrument grabbed my attention enough for me to listen, but I kept my eyes glued on the half-empty pint glass in my hand. As I watched the bubbles of the toxic drink rise and fall quickly, the microphone screeched as a young, soft voice filled the room.

“ _Time’s passing me by and I don’t give a damn_ ,” they sang with every emotion I seemed to be bottling up inside of me. The voice was enough to make me snap my eyes away from my own self-pity, it cracked in all the right places with an almost folk twang to it, hitting me right in the chest like a heavyweight. I heard a few encouragements from the crowd as the voice got stronger and more distinguishable from the mummers around me making me realise it was too familiar to be a coincidence.  
I almost fought through the room full of people to glimpse at the stage, and there stood upon it was Ross, an old, wooden fender adorning his hand.

I had never expected to see one of my friends with their eyes closed, feeling every word they were singing as if it possessed their body, let alone be any good at it. Yet here he was, singing and playing with such a talent that professionals would have been envious. Ross had never told me he could even play anything, let alone something so soul destroying. I stood shoulder to shoulder with others hurting just as much as I was, staring up at my friend as he whispered the secrets of my subconscious mind back to me.

_“Oh, how the nights are getting lonely,_   
_How I long for arms to hold me, and my mind drifts back to you._

_How I wish someone had told me, don’t you dare let go of Sophie,_   
_Only God knows where you are now,”_

Every word he said ripped through me like a dagger, and all I could fucking do was stand there engulfing every single one. It was beyond me how some people were holding a conversation about anything whilst he was painting this masterpiece on the stage above us, no topic seeming worthy to interrupt this moment.

“ _Because I’ve had enough of drinking and I’m sick of over thinking,_  
 _Friend of a friend told me he thought you were in town._  
 _So I took a train to where your mother lived, the place we used to play when we were kids_  
 _And there you were smiling as per usual.”_

That feeling where a song clicked within me was my second favourite feeling in the whole world, the first being consumed by _him_ of course. The music though was the only thing to make my subconscious thoughts make sense, and who could have thought my dorky, yet chav friend would have been the one to do that harder than anybody ever had before? He placed the used guitar back onto the stand ready for the next hopeful, undiscovered talent to take as he hopped off the stage nonchalantly as if he had not just crafted and presented one of the only things to ever make sense to me. A few patrons slapped him on the back before they quickly moved on to the young Irish girl taking his place. I felt bad, but nothing she could have ever done could match what he had.  
“Gerard! You came!” Ross grinned at me, bumping my fist and patting my shoulder as if he had not just made me completely and utterly shellshocked with his talent.   
“You, you, what?” I stuttered out, blinking back at him.  
“I told you I had a secret to trust you with! Now come on, I’m dying for a cig!”

——-

I inhaled sharply around the Marlboro Red I had been glad to have brought with me instead of my roll-ups; I needed the strength of the nicotine now more than ever. I shivered despite the outdoor heating lights beaming down on us, however, my breathing becoming more regulated with each sharp intake of chemicals. I had not smoked something this strong in a few weeks so welcomed the dizzy nicotine hit it gave me, the buzz from the beer and the cigarette wrapping me up in the intoxication that I craved so desperately. The upbeat folk music was flowing freely up the stairs, pouring into the smoking area making Ross bob his head out of time to the major chord rhythm.  
“God, I needed this,” he sucked in a gulp full of smoke deeply into his lungs. I had been regretful to give him a cigarette at all, anything tainting his already perfect voice feeling like a crime against humanity. The rough tone when he sang was already there, he didn’t need the aid of smoking to produce it artificially like others did.  
“What the actual fuck?” I managed to spit out, the amber glow from the end of my smoke shaking as my hands trembled. I did not know if I was finding it hard to still them because of the cold air, or for the fact that the emotions I had muted for years had come flooding back to me all at once.   
“Oh yeah, I bet you’re wondering what the fuck is going on!” He laughed as if something was funny.

\---

Ross had gone on to tell me that he could not claim this weird, yet amazing place as his own discovery. In fact, his brother used to come here with his girlfriend before they had finally escaped the town that had held them back. As soon as Ross had hit that age that he would not immediately have been stopped and asked for ID, he had started to bring him with him. Ross’ parents had inherited the farm and business from his grandparents and had always assumed their two sons to do the same. His brother had almost run away from the expectations, choosing a simpler life miles away leaving it all down to Ross. He was never quite as defiant as his brother, despite having the inner desire to be. He graciously accepted the responsibility of the family business, letting his father dictate and pave his future. He told me he had wanted to be a sound engineer ever since he could remember, or even knew the correct name for one, but the annual salary of one being the same of what his father made in a month making it a difficult option for him. His father had not even wanted him to take music classes in school, with the worry of temptation for a rebellious life becoming too strong, just like it did for his older son. Ross loved his parents, he told me he didn’t want to disappoint them so he sucked it up under the compromise he could carry on the music lessons he had been having since he was young. He’d mentioned he’d had guitar lessons ever since he had wandered over to his mother’s grand piano and his hands had been just a little too small to play it. Instead, they brought him a child-sized guitar which he quickly upgraded to a proper one as he grew, the piano dreams being long forgotten about for the twang of an acoustic guitar. His musical love was kept a secret from everybody, his parents not trusting him to not become completely infatuated with it and his other friends mocking him for something they would never be able to understand. No, he kept his music buried away in his room only exposing it to this place occasionally on a Sunday night to get rid of some of the overflowing, burning desire inside of him. Writing his feeling within song and lyrics satisfied him for a while until the itch became too much and he had to play them for somebody. His brother had suggested he take the leap and perform to the room below us a couple of years ago, filling him with nerves at first but quickly becoming his outlet for everything.

His story baffled me because, I guessed, I didn’t really know him at all; none of us did. Parts hit me on a personal level, the expectations of parents and Joe ringing too true for my own comfort. It took us two more cigarettes each to get through the tale of his life until I finally understood every inch of him that he wanted me to. Apart from one thing.  
“Ross?” I said.  
“Yeah?”  
“Who’s Sophie?” I asked referring to the name in that song that had hit home in too many ways.  
“Ah,” he smiled sadly, his eyes almost glassing over in a well-worn in pain. With a sharp intake of his cigarette, he continued, “I was waiting for you to ask that.”

What Ross told me was definitely not what I expected, and it had happened right under all of our noses and no one had even noticed.   
“Sophie,” he inhaled again, his voice catching in his throat as if the mystery girls name was enough to bring him pain alone. “I don’t really know how to start.”  
“Well, is she real, or is she just somebody you wrote a song about?”  
“Yep, she was real,” he nodded, not quite meeting my eyes.  
“Oh, I don’t think I know her.”  
He swallowed hard as if he was trying to get rid of a lump in his throat and then blinked away the glassiness he had to his eyes. “Have you ever been in love, Gerard?”  
The question took me by surprise, he knew me, well he thought he did, I wasn’t sure why he was asking me that.  
“Erh, I don’t know,” I shrugged. “I don’t think so, I don’t really know what love is.”  
“Oh come on, you know if you’ve been in love, surely? Is there no one you just need to be around and it just fucking sucks when you can’t be?”  
“Yeah, but I feel like that about a lot of things,” I said feeling unnerved at what he was saying. It was like he was giving my subconscious soul an autopsy, and I didn’t fucking like it. There had been a reason I cut my feelings of and that was for the simple fact that I didn’t have to feel them anymore. I had spent my whole childhood just fucking hurting too much, I was just sick of it.   
“No, Gerard! It’s different!”  
“I- erh,” I stuttered unsure of what to say.  
“Well, I told you I want you to trust me so I’ll tell you this story first, if you wanna know, of course.”  
“Tell me! You can trust me!”  
“I know,” he nodded “so you know I have the farm, right?”  
“Yeah.”  
“So, there’s these stables there that we hire out to people next to the lambing field I work in during Spring. Anyway, a few years back, there was this girl.”  
“Sophie?”  
“Yeah, that was Sophie. I think before I met her, I didn’t really get love. Literally though, as soon as I set my eyes on her, I knew she was different.” Whilst he spoke he got his phone out of his pocket, and I watched him as he scrolled far back for something until he pushed it into my face. There on the screen was a pixelated picture of a young girl smiling next to a tall, black horse. The girl was not posing, she appeared to be grinning at something else, her inquisitive big brown eyes reminding me too much of somebody else's that I knew. She had long brown hair flowing all the way down her back, rosy cheeks without the enchantment of makeup on her face and a red flannel jacket. She was nothing like the girls I had seen Ross be interested in before, but that wasn’t a bad thing. She was beautiful in an innocent kind of way, I could tell that much from the fuzzy photo on the screen.  
“That’s the only photo I have,” Ross sighed. “This was a couple of years back, so excuse the quality of it.”  
“What happened, Ross?” I frowned, the pain on his face being too worn-in and broken to be caused from a casual fling.  
“So, anyway, I finally got the courage to talk to her. Well,” he chuckled bitterly, “she spoke to me. I was feeding one of the runt lambs and she was always just such a sucker for any animal so she asked me if she could help. I was so fucking nervous, G! Do you know what that feels like to lose the ability to speak in front of someone because you just know you’re probably going to say something to fuck it up?”  
“Yeah,” I nodded truthfully. “I do.”  
“It’s fucking shit! Anyway, by some miracle she actually liked me! She asked me on a date and we spent 6 whole months together and it was the best fucking 6 months of my life. I saw her every day after school, the whole of summer and a little after that. I know I sound pathetic, it was just 6 months wasn’t it? But it felt different! Yes, I only spent a few months actually with her, but I’ve spent years loving her, and I still feel the same!”  
“I… I get that,” I sighed, the last sentence resonating with me a little bit too much. He looked up at me with wide eyes, confused at my confession. “What happened then?” I asked to move the conversation away from myself.  
“So, everything was fucking great, but Joe happened,” he laughed snidely.  
“What? How did Joe know? I had no idea you even had a girlfriend!”  
“Nah, you wouldn’t have done. He was obsessed with the idea that I was hiding something, which I guess I was, so he followed me. He saw me with her, and well, he told me to keep it quiet from everyone in the group because apparently it was pathetic that I loved her at all.”  
“Why was it pathetic?”   
“It was around the time that Alex broke up with him, he just struggled to be around anyone who was happy. I fucking let him change my mind for a brief second, and I’ve never forgiven myself.”  
“Tell me!”  
He took a deep breath before he spoke. “So, you know Jesse’s party, the one that got really bad and the cops turned up like a year and a half ago?”  
“Yeah, how could I forget?”  
“You know I got with Evie in the fucking bathroom of all places?”  
“Yeah!” Of course I remembered that we had all gathered around waiting for them to come out, giggling like children.   
“She found out,” he bit his lip hard. “The worst bit about it was that it was all my fucking fault, I was just young and stupid and fucking sick of Joe tormenting me!”  
He went on to describe the sleepless nights after she moved her horse away because she had told him she never wanted to see him again. She had purposely moved to a boarding school on the other side of the country so he could not find her, not even being able to look at him anymore. He loved her so much that every thought that he had, every song that he wrote, always drifted back to her.  
“But… but the end of the song!” I mentioned hopefully. I thought back to the lyrics I briefly remembered as his song about her was fading from my memory.

_“Now the nights aren’t so lonely, I’ve got Sophie’s arms to hold me,_   
_And I’ll never let you go.”_

“Why don’t you just find her if you can't forget about her? You were both young and-“  
“She died, Gerard.” His words left me cold as if I had just been dunked in freezing cold water. I blinked back at him as if he was making some sick sort of joke, but his shaky breaths and torn up expression suggested he wasn’t.  
“She what?” I asked weakly.  
“She died. She died last year.”  
“I don’t…” I trailed off unsure of what to tell him.  
“She was riding her horse, it got spooked and knocked her off and yeah, she landed on her head and neck but I don’t really wanna go into that,” a fat, single tear dribbled down his cheek.  
“Ross, I’m so sorry, I had no idea! You should have said.”  
“Nah,” he sniffed hard, getting rid of any trace of tears from his face, “you were all busy with your own lives and I just told you all I went on holiday whilst I mourned her. It was my own fault at the end of the day, I was just too scared to admit I was in love with her.”  
I had no idea that the ski trip to Austria he had been on had been a lie whilst he was torn up, hating himself every fucking night. He had come back into the group without any external hint of sadness despite feeling as if his world was over, never letting on to us that something was wrong at all. I had never felt guilt like it, he was suffocating and I had been too caught up with the drugs and the lies to even fucking notice.  
“To answer what that end of that song is about though, I just thought about what I would have done if things were different, what I would have done if I just got to see her one last time,” he sighed. “Anyway, it’s probably stupid! We were both sixteen, we probably wouldn’t have still been together, it just sucks that I’ll never get to find out.”  
“Fuck,” I pulled him into a tight hug. “You know you can talk to about anything, right?”  
“I know, I love the others with my whole heart but there’s always been something different about you. I realised that from the day I first met you and you wouldn’t take one of my biscuits that Joe stole,” he chuckled at the memory. “You’re not an arse hole, you just pretend to be one.”  
“That’s our secret though,” I smirked, retracting my arms.  
“Now then G, I told you my biggest secrets tonight so do you wanna tell me what's wrong?”  
Shit.

“You know how you feel with Sophie?” I asked him nervously.  
“Yeah?”  
“I think I have a Sophie, but it’s not that simple.” I breathed out the words finally confessing my worries not only to myself, but out loud. I could not describe what Ross had done to me, but it was the impossible. The unnerving feeling every time I thought of Frank had been replaced by something else; tranquillity. It’s like I finally understood the anger and the pent up feelings for once in my life, and that was only done with the thought of losing him. I didn’t know what I would have done if I was in Ross’ position because the thought of him not being around anymore made me almost sick. If he wasn’t here, I wasn’t sure what I would have done and maybe that made something click inside of me. I had a Sophie, and I needed to tell him before it was too late.  
“Why is it not that simple?” Ross frowned.   
“It’s not someone who I could ever be with.”  
“Why not? Oh, Gerard, you’re not having an affair with like a teacher or something are you? I can’t get on board with that-“  
“No, you doughnut! I dunno, I can’t tell you why.”  
“Why not?”  
“You would hate me!”  
“Gerard, I would never hate you! Just tell me!”  
“I- I can’t,” I looked at him in utter defeat. As soon as I confessed it to Ross, it would be real, and I was sure that would be too much for one night. The emotions inside me were going wild, I needed him more than I’d ever needed anything before and that was freaking me out enough.   
“Okay,” Ross agreed. “Can I ask you what happened?”  
“I dunno what happened, I don’t think they love me back.”  
“Oh, how could someone not love you, G?” He grinned at me.   
“Easily,” I forced a bitter laugh.  
“Nah, have you told them?”  
“No.”  
“So, how would you know?”  
“I know what you’re saying, but it’s scary, Ross!”  
“I know,” he agreed, “but at least you still have the chance.”  
His words rang true with me as that feeling in the pit of my stomach spread beneath my skin. I could no longer just sit still there when he was out in the world, he was alive, and he needed to know. He could throw it all back in my face, I didn’t care, but I couldn’t just sit there and not try. We might never have been able to be together, but to just hold him one last time would have been worth it. The emptiness I felt with other people suddenly made sense to me, they just weren’t him. No one would ever be him and to be away from him was fucking painful.   
“Ross, I need to go!” I shot up from the bench that we were sat at, the cold flooding into my bones as I moved away from the heater.  
“Where?”  
“I need to tell them!”  
“Yeah?” He grinned.  
“Yeah, man!”  
“Good luck!” He ruffled my hair and sent me on my way.

I felt panicked as if I was up against the clock somehow. I didn’t have time to wait for that fucking bus driving at 5 miles per hour with the black ice, I needed to get to him now. Every second I was not in his company felt like standing too close to radiation, it was killing me. The snow-covered terrain made it difficult to run, especially down the untouched side streets I was taking as short cuts, but I just could not stop. If I stopped running, it was only another moment longer I had to wait to be with him. I loved him so much that it hurt which was an idea that was becoming more apparent to me with each heavy footstep I was taking in the freezing cold night. Warm Christmas lights passed me by in a flurry as I raced to the other side of town, nothing being beautiful enough to captivate my attention quite in the way that he did.

My lungs burnt with the air that was too fresh and my own fitness level that had been tainted by the cigarettes that I smoked, but I eventually stumbled outside of his house. I had never been so cold, but I didn’t think that was the reason why I was violently shaking. I went to try the door, but the lights were all off and there was a key in the other side making it an impossible entry route. I then attempted to ring him but his phone was switched off. I felt almost defeated as I kicked the gravel beneath me. It was the only area around me not covered by snow, the salty grit being purposely laid to stop any of the threatening snow from falling on the path to their house. Frank always told me I was always too much of a sucker for believing in the universe giving me signs, but this had to be one. The snow was making everything almost untouchable apart from those rocks I had just kicked under my feet, and that had to mean something. My mind lit up with an idea, it was cliched and most likely ridiculous, but I had to try.

His front door had a ledge covering it that I needed to get on. His room was at the very top of the house and my aim was not the best, so I searched desperately for something to get me the leverage I needed. I was not necessarily strong, I went to the gym sure, but I was no Jesse. Something gave me the strength I needed, something that I had pent up for years. I jumped up high, only managing to grab the ledge before slipping again, grazing my knuckles in the process. The rocks I had gathered in my jacket pocket made it harder, but I needed them. I jumped again and did exactly the same thing.  
“Fuck,” I cursed to myself, sighing deeply one last time before taking one last running jump attempt. With the fire within me giving me energy, I managed to scrabble on to the snow-covered ledge, making my cut knuckles sting with the cold, but being too close to give up now. With that, I reached over nervously for the garage roof that was right below his room. I was perhaps only 7 foot off the ground at that point, but my hands were shaking as I attempted to leap off the small platform I was standing on when the roof was slippy in itself. With another deep breath and a large leap, I managed to land on top of the garage. I scaled it, slipping many times, but never hurting myself enough to give up on him, until I finally reached the metal fire escape bars leading up to his room. I couldn't just climb them because his window was closed and my apparent fear of heights I did not know that I had was taking over a little. The fact they were covered like an icy death also did not help. 

I gripped onto one of the metal bars to keep me steady and reached for the rocks I had in my pocket. I only had a few to get this right because I doubted I had the strength to do that snow-covered almost parkour ever again. I cursed to myself as I missed his window with the first one, my hands shaking and bleeding too much with the bitterly cold weather to be accurate. I closed my eyes and thought of his serine sleeping face to steady myself before taking out another rock and throwing it as hard as I could at the window. At that point, I didn’t give a fuck if I broke the fucking thing, I just needed to see him.

After a few misses and only 5 good hits, I kissed the last rock I had in my hand, unsure of what to do when my plan inevitably failed. By some miracle, I smacked the window hard enough to make a dull thud on the glass as I waited desperately, with quickly fading hope. With an almost defeat, I started to plan my route down from the garage roof I was seemingly trapped on until I heard something click above me. My heart hammered as I looked up at the dark sky, trying to shelter my eyes from the lightly falling flurry.

There he was poking his head out of his bedroom window, a beautiful worry plastered all over his face.

“What the fuck are you doing?” He asked me, his words bitter and tired but still giving me whatever it was I needed.

I lost the ability to speak with his beauty, I just needed him desperately.


	48. I should have tried to go to sleep thinking about anything in the world but you

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> IM SO SORRY!!!!!!
> 
> Something happened and I had to be with my family for a bit I hope you all understand and again, I'm sorry I kept everyone waiting for so long 💜 
> 
>  
> 
> If u don't like sex scenes I also wouldn't read this chapter... but it'll get back to normal fluff soon

**F POV -**

“Gerard!” I hissed into the dark night as he was stood on my garage roof blinking up at me as if it was the most normal thing in the world. It wasn’t like he was ignoring me, it was more like he was stunned. “Get off the fucking roof, you’re gonna fall!”  
I didn’t trust him stood there, the harsh winds around him already making him waver.  
“Just get down, and I’ll let you in the front door you stupid fucking idiot!”  
“Can’t get down,” he mumbled up at me, his voice sounding unusual and high like he was being forced to talk. I wanted to ask him what the fuck he was doing turning up at my house so late on a Sunday night, well actually now extremely early Monday morning. I feared he was high or something, but there was something in his widened eyes that was not caused by narcotics that scared me into trusting him.  
“I don’t know what you want me to do!” I whined helplessly. I loved him, but I was not about to be climbing on to my garage roof with the 10-foot drop from my window, especially in the shitty weather.  
“I- I need to talk to you! It’s urgent!”  
“Well, why didn’t you just fucking talk to me like a normal person instead of getting yourself stuck on my roof, you moron?” I couldn’t help but laugh at his stupidity despite the severity of the situation.  
“Because you weren’t answering your phone and there was a key in the door!”  
“Could it not wait?” I frowned.  
“No! I need to talk to you now!”  
“How did you even get up there?” I thought out loud. Gerard was just under 6 foot and had never climbed things in his life. I remembered when we were kids and I’d forced him to climb a tree with me, he had ended up going home in a huff after I laughed at him when he couldn’t get even 2 foot off the ground before bailing on our mini-adventure, so what the fuck had changed?  
He just shrugged pathetically at me.  
“Hang on,” I sighed and retreated back into the warmth of my room momentarily. I ran downstairs to the bathroom to grab a towel and quickly sprinted back to the window before he fucking fell to his death or something.  
“Erm?” He frowned up at me as I tossed him down the towel. He caught it with the one hand he wasn’t clinging on to the metal fire escape bar to with dear life.  
“Use it for grip on the bars, it’s the only way up!”  
“I don’t wanna climb that,” he fretted.  
“Well, you should have thought about that before you got stuck, shouldn’t you?”

He did not reply, instead, he took a shaky step to the first bar and used the towel to cover the bar his hand was holding to stop the ice from making the task impossible. He looked up at me one last time, the wind sweeping his now overgrown hair across his face as I saw him visibly swallow with nerves.  
“Come on, G,” I tried to encourage him, just wanting him to be safe more than anything. I had no idea if he was drunk, high or what, but it was nearly spiralling me into another panicked state watching him shakily climb the fire escape to my window.

When he was about halfway up, I felt my heart grind to an almost complete stop as one of his feet slipped on the black ice.  
“Gerard!” I yelled down at him in horror as he regained his composure and began climbing again. Watching Gerard climb an icy fire escape was like watching a baby gazelle trying to escape from a lion, all I could do was hang out of my bedroom window and watch him potentially fatally fall. My heart stayed in my throat as he battled against the falling snow and vast winds until he finally reached the top few bars.  
“Grab my hand,” I leant out as far as I could offering it down to him.  
“I can’t let go,” he mumbled completely freezing.  
“Well, it’s let go by choice and you grab my hand or you eventually just fall off!” I snapped at him not willing to entertain his fears at that moment. “Gerard, just trust me, please,” I begged him searching in his eyes for that connection we had established since before I could even remember. He may have hurt me, but we had built up an empire between us that not even a Godzilla sized problem could knock down. Thankfully, he seemed to feel the same as he reluctantly reached out to my outstretched hand and grabbed it as I began to haul him through my wide-open window. I was shocked by how cold his touch was, he was almost as cold as the ice outside, his skin feeling like the winter air itself. I couldn’t think about it too much though as I had to muster all my strength to pull him into my room. The guy might have not weighed a lot, but lifting a nearly eighteen-year-old boy though your window was a lot easier in theory, especially one who was almost frozen with fear.  
With one last pull, he tumbled through my window almost knocking me to my feet and causing the contents of my desk to spill all onto the floor with his flailing limbs.  
“You fucking idiot!” I yelled at him, panting heavily once the ordeal was over and he was safe. “What the fuck were you thinking?”  
He did not respond, he just looked at me like a guilty child who was being scorned. I couldn’t believe he had been irresponsible enough to try and break into my house in the worst blizzard this town had seen for years. I was furious at him, yet the sight of his heavily bleeding knuckles left that hollow feeling right in my chest.  
“Gerard,” I sighed grabbing his hands and clutched them close to my chest trying desperately to warm them. “You’re so cold.”  
“I ran here from town,” he confessed into the darkroom as if it was a guilty secret. He only had on his brown leather jacket and jeans to shelter him from the harsh weather, no wonder the idiot was soaking wet and shivering in front of me.  
“Why?”  
“I told you, I needed to talk to you,” he sighed.  
“About what?” I examined his sore, cut skin. It wasn’t exactly a gruelling gash, it was just where he had scraped his skin against the wall but the cold and flexing of his hands had ripped the skin enough to cause me concern. I shouldn’t have held his hands in the way that I did, my own thumb delicately rubbing across the broken skin, but I just couldn’t help it. Friends still cared about each other, right?  
“I need to tell you something, and I don’t think you’re going to like it,” with his words, I glanced at him nervously. Whatever it was he was going to say was probably going to break my heart. My heart that was already sick, tired and bruised so badly that he could destroyed it with a few simple words.  
“Please,” I looked up at him. “Can you just not hurt me for once?”  
“What?” He frowned.  
“I’m... I just don’t think I can take it,” I confessed into the darkness.  
“If I don’t say it, I think it’ll kill me,” his voice echoed, broken and sore.  
“Okay, but I can’t pretend anymore. I’m not going to entertain your bullshit for any longer, G, please don’t ask me to do that.” Yes, I was embarrassed about saying this to him, confessing every little thing that I had worked so hard to hide, but I couldn’t do it anymore. If he wanted to be my friend, he needed to keep it that way. He looked at me with confusion but it did not seem to deter him, I didn’t think it would have mattered if I’d covered my ears and ran from him, he was determined to tell me something. I dreaded waiting for the rejection or the confession of his love for somebody else, bracing myself as if I was about to be punched in the face.  
“I, I can’t be your friend anymore, not like this, it’s killing me, bug,” his voice thick with emotion causing me to drop his hands as if they were hot pokers. His words spread a hot and sickly anxiety beneath my skin, my ears burning with the words I had been dreading for years. He must have realised everything, and he was going to tell me he did not want to be around me anymore.  
“I need to tell you that I can’t give you up. You have every right to punch me in the fucking face or whatever, but I couldn’t fucking function without telling you!”  
“Wh-What?” I stuttered completely unsure of what he was implying  
“I like you, Frank, like really fucking like you,” he glanced down at my lips before flickering his eyes back to meet my own, causing my heart to almost beat out of my chest.  
“H-huh?” I said pathetically.  
He did not speak again, instead, he shocked me by surging forward and pressing his lips on to mine. Although the build-up to the action was quick, his contact was painfully slow. He caught my top lip between his as I tried to duck away from his kiss, knowing it would have been too painful to resist if he had gotten proper contact. The softness to his lips melted me, the emotions inside of me starting to twist like a hurricane. To pull myself back from him was painful, but he just wanted attention. I ached to give him that, but I knew that was not healthy for either of us.  
“Gerard, don’t,” I mumbled not managing to stop myself from looking down at his lips hovering close to mine. Butterflies flapped their wings furiously in my stomach giving me that same feeling that you got during a drop on a rollercoaster, fending off the numbness inside of me. I had only pulled back far enough to only just about disconnect his lips from mine, but he was still close enough that his shaky breath tickled my lip.  
“I love you,” he whispered.  
“You don’t, you’re just lonely.”  
“I’m lonely because I love you,” he said as I felt his arms wrap around my waist, even his sodden jacket not being enough to drag myself away from him. His words filled me with a hope that I had almost forgotten how to feel, the regaining of my love for him starting slowly like a trickle of water but soon becoming a flood.  
“Gerard, I told you not to say things that were gonna hurt me,” I whispered back to him but could not stop the way my hands splayed on his chest nor the way my nose nuzzled against his. I closed my eyes painfully in an attempt to regain myself and build the walls back up to protect myself from his lies, but he had me, he always had and he always would.  
“No, bug, I realised it tonight. I really fucking love you,” he sighed.  
“You don’t have to tell me what I want to hear, I understand!”  
“I’m not telling it you because it’s what you want to hear, it is what I feel! I never meant to fall for you, but I can’t remember not feeling like this,” he groaned, his own heart hammering against mine as we were chest to chest.   
“I don’t know what to say,” I confessed to him. I didn’t believe his words, but it was hard not to become lost in them.  
“Don’t say anything, just kiss me,” he mumbled before closing the distance between us again and catching my top lip between his own once more. This time his poetic words had made me weaker, as everything else in the world seemed to cease to exist to me. He stayed there for the longest time before I finally gave in to the excruciating drive inside of me as I moved my mouth to align with his letting him peck my lips over and over, lingering for a little while longer each time until I could not take it anymore and I caught them with my own in an open-mouthed kiss.  
To kiss him again was indescribable, I felt as if I was gasping for breath but as my knees nearly gave way with the flood of feelings for him. He couldn’t have liked me, surely? But this kiss was different. It was soft and desperate all at the same time as he let out small moans as if it wasn’t enough for him. I let his hands wander downwards to cup my ass as my own wondered upwards and tangled in his hair. He was not the only who was desperate, and with the way I was pulling to bring him closer, I think he knew that. With our open-mouthed embrace, he began to run his warm tongue against my own, delving deeper with each kiss until they smashed together fiercely. The kiss was not rushed through lack of feeling, it was just that I had denied him for weeks now and to have him again was killing me, yet I didn’t seem to mind. Our bodies started to take over his words embarrassingly quickly as I realised how turned on we had both become as we began pressing our crotches together even more desperately than the kisses. I had denied myself of anything sexual for the past three weeks for the simple reason I could not detach myself from the way he had made me feel, but that didn’t matter now, he was going to make me feel like that all over again.

My own confidence took me by surprise as I began pushing him back gently so he tumbled on my bed and I crawled on top of his body. It was not that I suddenly felt in charge or anything, in fact, I was the most nervous I had ever been, but it’s just that I’d finally let myself go. His words charged me like an electric shock, even if I believed them to be fictitious. He most likely just wanted to get laid and no one else was around, but the way he could drip his emotion almost made me believe the truth it screamed. I think as well I was being selfish, I needed his body for my own benefit and greed just as he needed mine. With that thought hot in my head, I began to grind against him, taking him back at my forwardness.  
“I’ve fucking missed you,” he sighed breathlessly as I began to smother the skin on his neck in hot, open-mouth kisses. The vibrations in his throat tingled my tongue with his words of lust, sending shivers all down my spine.  
“Missed me?” I toyed with him “I saw you on Friday.”  
“No, I’ve missed... fuck me,” he cut off as I pushed against him particularly hard. His hands had long ago stopped with the confinement of my pyjamas as they were getting pushed down further with his hands. He gripped me tightly, pushing me harder into him as my legs straddled either side of him, panting heavily as he did so. “I’ve missed this.”  
Instead of verbally replying, I dipped my fingers under his soaking wet shirt, feeling his freezing cold skin under the tips. The rush of our actions meant that he hadn’t even taken his jacket off yet, but with the increased speed of what we were doing, it slowly had begun to fall down his shoulders. I greedily pulled it the rest of it the way off, suddenly not being able to bear the feeling of his snow sodden clothes on my exposed skin. Although the room was dark, I could still see the way his pale, wet skin glistened as I peeled off his t-shirt making it almost agonising when I had to disconnect our lips long enough to pull it over his head. I pushed him back down working my hands along his bare chest whilst I kissed him deeply. He was so cold, I just wanted to warm him to the point it almost made me emotional with need for him. The idiot had made a forty-minute journey through the worst weather this town had seen in years and had become drenched as he had stupidly scrambled onto my garage roof. I trailed my hands downwards to pull at the button on his jeans, my hands shaking too much to carry out the action with one, swift movement. I moved my lips away from his as he audibly groaned with the lack of contact. My stomach fluttered with anticipation as he tried his best to reconnect us until he threw his head back in pleasure as I began kissing down his jaw all the way down to his chest. I shuffled down his body a little to get the grip I needed to get his jeans off. They were so tight and wet that they felt as if they were spray-painted on, but as he elicited small expletives as my hand fumbled to undo his jeans, grabbing him in the process, it spurred me on. Finally, the button sprang open as I began to slowly pull down the zipper to his pants. I didn’t know why I felt nervous, it was clear he was turned on, I could tell that much from the moment our kiss had begun to get heated. I guessed it was the point of no return though. We could have made out for a bit, but it could just have easily been forgotten about. If we went further though, then this whole friendship pact was over. His body was enticing me so much though, I suddenly didn’t fucking care. I would make this mistake a million times over just to feel the way his skin slid against my own with sweat and lust, to feel the way his body fitted against mine so well and to hear my fucking name tumble off his lips as he struggled to contain himself, despite the fact I was barely touching him. With his help, I managed to discard his jeans as he lay beneath me in his underwear. For a moment, I sat back, still straddling him but just admiring his frame.  
“What?” He asked self consciously trying to cover his face with his hands as my eyes traced his pale skin.  
“You’re fucking beautiful,” I spat out, unable to contain myself for any longer. I pulled his hands harshly away from his face and instead placed them on my clothed chest so he could feel the way my heart was pounding all for him. All that draped his body was the thin cotton of his boxer shorts, and they did not hide much. I could still see the outline of him through them, the way he was turned on in that moment all for me.  
“You don’t have to say that,” his voice sounded shaky and insecure, “I know this is just about sex for you, so you don’t have to protect me.”  
“You think this is about sex?” I frowned at him, bringing his fingertips to my lips so I could kiss them between my words.  
“Erm,” he gestured down to my crotch that was giving him every sign that this was about sex. It wasn’t though. Sex didn’t seem the right word to describe this, it seemed to be something animalistic, rushed and just for selfish pleasure. This wasn’t like that though, it was something selfless and deeper than ever before. This was love.  
“G,” I looked him deeply in the eye, “if you think that, I can try and prove it to you getting you your pyjamas out of my drawer, putting you into bed and calling it a night. I don’t care what we do, just whatever it is, I want it to be with you.”  
“You need to be careful,” he frowned up at me, worry etching it’s way deeply onto his face.  
“Why?” I responded barely above a whisper.  
“Because you’re making it hard for me not to love you. I’ve been reluctant to admit it for so long, and you have every right to never talk to me again, but I love you... more than anyone should ever love their best friend.”  
His words left my skin just as hot as his touch as I felt my throat drop to my stomach.  
“I’ve wanted you since before I could remember,” I blurted out my confession. I was thankful for the darkness, it meant I did not have to face the reality of my actions. I could see him, yes, but I did not have the intrusiveness of the light which would have instantly snatched away my confidence. Things were easier to admit in the night, and I was still unsure as to why. The nightfall gave me a cloak of confidence as if the very truth to my words couldn’t destroy both of us as soon as they hit the air and became real.  
“Frank,” he groaned into the darkness, “I know you’re too nice to reject me, and that’s okay but-“  
“Gerard!” I snapped at him, taking him by surprise. “Stop telling me how to fucking feel! I know you think I’m some naive virgin and that you’re some unloveable being but I’m telling you they’re both bollocks! I love you.”  
“I’m so fucking confused,” he laughed facetiously, “but,” his voice got slower, and rougher “I don’t fucking hate being clueless for once.”  
“Me neither,” I sighed happily as he pressed his lips against my own again and the rhythm we had set before of grinding against each other started again.

//  
I repeated my actions from before, slowly kissing down his chest leaving goosebumps on his skin with the way I dipped my tongue against him. As I sucked on the area around his hip bone, I felt him inhale sharply as the skin beneath me became taut. One of my hands was splayed on his chest to keep myself steady whilst the other snaked up his thigh and grabbed at him through his boxer shorts. I felt his toes dig into the bed, his legs wriggling trying to encourage me to touch him more. Well, I thought he wanted more contact from me up until I slowly began to pull his boxers off and discard of them and he quickly shot from underneath me. It was only for a split second, but I still got to admire his body in the full glory I had become addicted to. His pale skin cloaked the sharp contours of his bones and muscles, screaming out to be touched, kissed, loved.  
“Wh-What?” I asked in utter confusion as I stood awkwardly on my knees, still fully covered by my pyjamas whilst he lay there completely exposed.  
“I don’t want you to touch me yet,” he stated, blinking up at me as if he wasn’t lying there, obviously turned on but denying my touch.  
“Erm?” I responded as if it was a question.  
“I need to erm, last long,” he blushed.  
“Why?” I frowned.  
“Because,” he sighed out in frustration. “I need to make sure you feel good first.”  
“Who’s the naive virgin now?” I smirked down, earning a half-hearted scowl from him.  
“I’ll fucking make you sorry you said that,” he toyed getting to his knees and launching himself at me so that we were at the wrong end of the bed. Instead of a fight, he engulfed me in a hot, wet kiss, our limbs tangled together as he moaned heavily into my mouth with the contact of our joint hips. It was exaggerated, but he was proving his point well. The way he cursed with seeming pleasure made me melt into the bed, my whole body throbbing with anticipation for him. He wasted no time, he simply tossed off my shirt effortlessly and began palming me through my pyjamas bottoms.  
“Fuck,” I spat out before I could stop myself. He wasn’t even doing much, I’d just forgotten what it was like to be touched by him.  
“Hmm?” He hummed smugly above me engulfing my curses of pleasure with his mouth.  
“Please,” I whined instinctively bucking my hips into his hand with some animalistic urge he had managed to drag out of me in approximately 0.5 seconds. It was embarrassing with how badly I was craving him, but I was too turned on to care. Out of impatience more than anything, I kicked off my own pants almost gasping in relief as our hot, naked bodies finally touched again. To have him kiss me, his hands running all over my body as he did so making him pant heavily in my ear made me curse with regret that I had denied his body for this long. I was utterly infatuated with him, to love him in this way felt indescribable. Our kiss was probably not one worthy of a movie, nor could it be poetically put into words, it was wet and lacked any form of rhythm but the desperation of it made it perfect to me. My jaw became slack when he grabbed my dick from between our bodies and started moving his hand loosely around it, making it almost impossible to kiss him in any sort of dignified way.  
All too soon though he was pulling away, the lack of contact making me almost freezing. He had barely touched me and he was already walking away, leaving me naked and lustful for him.  
“Wh-What?” I scrambled to my elbows as I watched him get to his feet and kick around on the floor for something in the darkness with a frown on his face.  
“I didn’t want it to get more heated before I had the chance to find something,” he mumbled. Suddenly, his eyes lit up slightly as he found his discarded, sodden jeans as he searched quickly in the pocket for something. I was nothing else but confused when he pulled out his brown, leather wallet and began to search through it.  
“Erm, Gerard?” I frowned up at him with the way he seemed to forget we were both naked, and we had been tangled together only seconds ago. I didn’t think it was exactly the right time to be looking for cash.  
“Ah,” he ignored me and pulled something out of it, quickly scrunching it in his hand before I could see what it was.  
“Gerard?” I asked again as he crawled back onto my body and silenced me with a kiss. I wanted desperately to ask him what the fuck he had been doing again and what was clutched safety in his clenched fist, but I got lost in the way his tongue moved against my own messily. He soon moved away from my lips, instead kissing down my body in that certain way that sent shivers all down my spine and goosebumps all over my skin. He stopped slightly once he reached my navel, trailed his hand slowly up my thigh as he sucked on the skin beneath him. My breathing hitched as he began to touch me again, stroking me slowly at first but becoming faster to meet each one of my moans for him. I had become so lost in pleasure that I had forgotten that thing in his hand and had not realised his lips had been trailing down my body further until I felt his them stretch around me. His mouth was warm, hot and wet making me groan with satisfaction for him.  
“I need you to be desperate for me, baby,” he mumbled as he slightly pulled off. I didn’t know what the fuck he was playing at, it was pretty clear by the way my fingers had a vice grip in his now overgrown hair that I was already desperate for him. He placed his mouth back around me, his cheeks hollowing and meeting the rhythm of his hand.  
“I am,” I spat out trying to think of anything to turn me off so I would not finish embarrassingly quickly.  
“Do you want to?” He muttered darkly, looking up at me from under his hair with intrusive eyes.  
“What?” I asked breathlessly.  
“Do you want to? You can say no.”  
“What?” I repeated, frustration dripping in my voice with his ambiguity and lack of contact. He quickly answered my question though with actions, something I didn’t think words could have quite done in the same way. He kept the one hand on the base of my dick and kissed the tip almost tenderly as with the other he trailed behind me to cup my ass again before looking up at me with the same question still written in his eyes.  
“You can say no,” he said again, his voice shaky with what seemed like nerves. “I understand.”  
It was so weird, all those times before I had practically been begging him for sex as if it was fickle, but now the reality of it was ripe and present, I had never felt more scared. Being fearful wasn’t necessarily a bad thing to me, but I had not exactly been expecting it. I had almost accepted the boundaries of our friendship and had not expected to lose my virginity on a cold December night to my best friend when I had been getting ready to give into the night. I was so nervous, I was almost shaking, but it did not take me long to decide fully on my response. I knew he wasn’t pushing for anything, but I needed him to take control of this. We were both petrified, that much was obvious, but he was less new to this than I was, even if I was a bit different from his past experiences. The way he had told me about his sex life, he had always taken control. Right now though, that guy was gone and instead was someone just as naive and innocent as I was. I did not trust my voice not to shake with a response, so instead simply nodded my head in agreement.  
“Are you sure? I don’t wanna-“  
“G,” I reassured him as strongly as I could. As he looked up at me, I simply nodded down at him again. I wasn’t aware of the way I had closed my eyes and had become engulfed in pleasure again with his mouth around me, but suddenly the new context of the actions sent even more butterflies through my stomach than ever before.  
He continued to move his mouth around me, making me cry out in attempts of muted pleasure every time he met his fist to his lips. I was becoming increasingly frustrated as he moved off me again, my whole lower body burning with want for him in such a way that was making me impatient. I hadn’t realised in my fits of pleasure, but whatever he had in his hand he had discarded temporarily on the bed, which he was now scrabbling with. It was dark so I couldn’t exactly see what it was, all I could hear was the rustling of something as his shaky hands tried to open it.  
“What?” I managed to ask in a wavered voice.  
“I don’t want you to think I came over here with these intentions,” he mumbled, “I had it in my wallet for a while because of this.”  
“What?” I asked again with more agitation at his crypticness. He just sheepishly held up the small, foil packet in his hand. I squinted at it in the darkness trying to figure out what the fuck it was.  
“Erm, why do you have that?” I asked awkwardly as it dawned on me. “It’s not like I’m gonna get pregnant or-“  
“It’s not a condom,” he groaned, visibly cringing at my naivety. “Fuck me, Frank, you’re so frustrating!”  
“What is it then?”  
“For fuck's sake! It’s-“ he mumbled the last word of his sentence.  
“What? I can’t hear you!”  
He said it even more quietly than before, the most sexual forward person I knew suddenly retreating back into himself.  
“What? Just spit it out, Gerard!”  
“LUBE!” He said louder than he anticipated, clapping his hands over his mouth as his phrase echoed around my empty bedroom. I couldn’t help the giggle that escaped my lips, and despite his groans, he couldn’t deny the smirk spread across his own face. That’s what was so appealing to me, he was still my best friend. Sex wasn’t something perfect like rose petals on the bed with a _Take That_ song on in the background, it was awkward and funny at times, but I never wanted to share it with anybody else. I didn’t need the perfection when it was him who was loving me, the imperfections were what made it more than I could have ever have dreamed of.  
“Stop laughing!” He whined burying his face in my exposed thigh, that fucking packet of lube in his hand crinkling with his movements only making me laugh more. “Frank!”  
“Sorry-“ I tried to stifle my laughter which was only accomplished when he began kissing around my pelvic bone with open lips and an exposing tongue. My half-arsed apology soon turned into a happy, longing sigh as I bucked my hips aching for more contact with him. He didn’t make me wait for long before he placed his mouth around me again, my fingers pulling desperately at his hair as I was becoming even more turned on; as if that was even possible. He swirled his tongue around the tip of my dick, massaging my balls in the process sending waves of pleasure through me that were so strong the ability to move my legs in anything but uneven twitches became impossible. God, I had missed his fucking mouth. If all my feelings of love for him were removed from that situation, it was still worth it just for the way he sucked down hard on me as his cheeks were warm and soft. My toes were digging deeply into the sheets in pleasure whilst my head lolled back as I tried to bite my lip hard from crying out his name when his hand trailed down further. He expertly grabbed one of the pillows from the side of us that had become discarded in our tangle of limbs and encouraged my hips upwards whilst he momentarily disconnected his mouth from me. I wondered what the fuck he was doing until he placed the pillow under the small of my back and cupped my ass as he resumed sucking down on me. I wanted to be nervous, well of course I was, but the feeling of him around me was making me so euphoric that I was finding it hard to focus on the fear of the unknown. His hands had never particularly explored so low on me, kneading the skin underneath him, but it felt fucking good. There had been a brief few moments where his hands had wondered for perhaps seconds too long before now that he would quickly move so I would not get the wrong intentions, but this was different. This time he had one hand on the base of my dick with his mouth sucking harshly on the tip sending me into a frenzy whilst his other hand cupped me from underneath as he encouraged my hips upwards to meet his mouth. He did not verbalise a question, but he looked up at me with his almost venomous amber eyes for consent as he trailed his fingers closer to what we both knew was coming. I just nodded as I awkwardly grabbed another pillow to throw over my face. It wasn’t that I was unconfident, I just could not handle the way he was looking up at me with such intensity. To encourage him further, I moved my hips upwards even higher to give him easier access. I wasn’t aware that he had even managed to get the lube open, but I felt his wet fingers slide against my skin as he trailed further between my legs. Before we entered something new to us, he kissed the tip of my dick one last time before pressing one of his fingers inside of me. I couldn’t describe the feeling, it wasn’t exactly uncomfortable, more anticlimactic. I had read those stupid Larry fan fictions, the ones where there’s an indescribable pleasure with the first virgin contact... but that just didn’t happen. The feeling of him inside me felt almost intrusive as my body naturally felt weird at the new contact. He was still working his mouth around me, so I still had some pleasure to focus on but my twitches were more because of the intrusiveness as oppose to the other feelings he caused. I made sure to make the right noises though, not wanting to discourage him or even wanting him to slow down. I didn’t care how I felt, I just wanted to feel a new sort of closeness to him. The press of his second finger inside caused more discomfort than the first, but it was not yet painful. He moved them in and out in a way that he had obviously done before with somebody else, but it was all so different to him his dominating confidence was not as strong as I knew it could be. His hands were shaky and his movements were almost disjointed, but I wasn’t even sure if that was how it was meant to feel. I had watched both types of porn obviously, I had read all about it fuck, I’d even heard about it, but maybe it was all lies. I didn’t particularly care though like I’d said, I just wanted to be close to him like that. I thought I was okay until he slid in another finger and suddenly pain seared inside me like a hot poker. I audibly hissed as I bit down on the pillow covering my face as I blatantly twitched my hips with my body's natural response to get away from the source of pain.  
“Shit, are you okay?” He asked suddenly stopping what he was doing with his mouth. That only made it worse though, the pleasure he was causing almost made it bearable but with his retraction of that, all that met me was the burning pain.  
“Yes,” I managed to stammer out, my voice unrecognisable with the way it got stuck in my throat.  
“I can stop, I-“ he sounded concerned but I just managed to wrap my legs around him to shut him the fuck up and just carry on. If we stopped now, we would be scared of this forever, and I could not be content with that now that I had a taste of him. I wanted him to love me, and I would have done anything to make that possible. With my escaped protests, he seemed to be more cautious than before. He resumed sucking my dick with his free hand still gripping the base but his fingers inside me stayed stationary. His caution, however, seemed to guide my body into its own rhythm. My body became more adjusted to his fingers and the pain became more of a dull ache as pleasure from the front of my body made it even more muted. I didn’t consciously do it, but I started rolling my own hips to fall further into his mouth and then back down on to his fingers. Suddenly, it did not feel so wrong or intrusive, it just added a new dimension that neither of us were familiar with. With my new encouragement, he began moving his fingers in and out at his own pace whilst continuing to do that fucking thing with his mouth causing gasps and moans to tumble out of my mouth as I became more turned on than I ever had before. I wanted to fuck him so badly, I could have cried at that moment because it was overwhelming. My whole pelvis was fucking burning as I wrapped my legs together around his shoulders and my fingers switched from tangling in his sheets to in his hair.  
“Tell me when you’re close and you’re ready,” he mumbled in his husky, dry voice as he licked around the head of my dick. He was a little ambiguous, but my body knew what he meant. I had managed to last a little longer with the unknown movement inside of me, but I was so close to the edge I was leaking into his mouth. I suddenly understood what he meant when he had told me I had to be close for this to work, his selflessness making me swell with pride for him. He wasn’t this over cocky, sex-crazed dick head with me, he was tender and loving and that only made me fall for him even more deeply. With the hand I had tangled in his hair, I pulled him upwards so he disconnected from me and slowly began to kiss upwards back to my face, throwing the pillow I had covered my face with far away from us. He looked at me deeply in my eyes because cautiously kissing my mouth. The kiss was not deep with a fear of rejection, so I dove my own tongue into his mouth to let him know I was ready, and I fucking wanted him. For a moment that felt like a lifetime, we lazily kissed as our bodies naturally aligned for the next step.  
“One second,” he mumbled against my lips as he got to his knees, still being slotted between my legs. Despite how desperate I was for his touch, I took the moment to appreciate his form. I hadn’t even really touched him, but his dick stood forward, hot and ready as if I’d given him something in return. I was going to give him something though, something that I would never even entertain about giving to anybody else. He grabbed the packed of almost discarded lube as he squeezed out to remaining contents on to himself and slathered it in. Seeing him touch himself and struggle to stop with the pleasure in his eyes made my want turn to need. There was no way I could have stopped myself from engulfing him at that moment, not even if Joe fucking Delo was stood in the room. I reached forward greedily and grabbed him to kiss me again as he tumbled onto my body. I realigned my hips on the pillow to give him better access as I wrapped my legs around his torso and pulled him closer to me.  
“It’s gonna hurt more like this,” he whimpered trying to stop the way his body was instinctively pressing against me and my willingness.  
“I don’t care,” I said hastily.  
“I don’t wanna hurt you,” he groaned grazing his teeth against my cheek, biting gently as he tried to restrain himself from the way I was encouraging him inside of me.  
“It might hurt, but I love you enough to need to see your face,” I flickered my eyes to his to show him my willing consent. With that, he lost control and dived to kiss me whilst guiding himself into me with his free hand.

I thought his fingers had hurt, but that was nothing to the searing pain his dick caused. It was thicker and longer than his fingers ever could be, and now I did not have the comforting contact of his mouth around me to keep me lost in the moment. He moved slowly, but I still lost the ability to function. Our kiss was long forgotten about, instead, our open mouths were just kind of slotted together. However, his muffled moans that reverberated around my slack mouth kept me going. The way he was cursing and moaning my name only made me want him further and deeper inside of me, regardless of the pain. Once he had managed to slide all the way inside despite my body's natural protest, he kept stationary, despite beads of sweat forming on his skin with the way it must have physically destroyed him not to let loose. I had no experience in that, but from how good the other stuff felt, I figured it was almost impossible to stay still. As he rocked so gently he barely even moved, our hot and sticky bodies collided making it possible for me to feel the hammer of his heart against my chest. He was fucking nervous for this, and I was going to have to help him just like he was helping me. He was inside of me, and as I adjusted more I was able to kiss him deeply as I rolled my hips into him. It wasn’t pain-free, but I wanted to see him weak and begging for my touch like he had seen me only moments earlier, so with that, I encouraged him to move. To minimise the discomfort, he wasn’t really pulling out that far at first, more grinding his hips inside of me, whimpering as he did so at the new contact. My legs were wrapped so tightly around him to keep him in place that he managed to go deeper than before as we set a rhythm between our bodies.  
“I need you to touch yourself,” he whimpered against my neck as he found it impossible to stop moving from inside of me. He had one hand cupping my ass bringing my hips up to meet his movements and the other supporting his body weight over mine. It wasn’t like my dick lost interest completely, I mean he was still hot and we were actually in the middle of sex, but the pain and discomfort had pulled me back from the edge a little. He grabbed one of my hands though, the one that had been scratching at his back, and pulled it between our sweaty bodies as he encouraged me to stroke myself. I felt a little awkward doing it, even when he wasn’t fucking watching me, but this wasn’t some overdramatised fantasy anymore. He was inside of me, crying out for me. My embarrassment, however, could not stop the pleasure I was deriving from my own actions as I became more desperate for him and let him move in and out of me freely as I became lost in a euphoric haze. He continued to move in and out of me until suddenly something happened from inside and I almost glitched. He touched something so fucking sensitive that I jolted before he slammed back onto the same spot. Although it felt strange at first, the more he hit it an almost burning sensation built up inside from me. It suddenly felt like everything was connected and that a thousand hands were touching me, making the pain welcomed and feel good.  
“There?” He mumbled against my skin. I had no real clue what he meant, but my body seemed to understand him perfectly as I sighed out a quick noise in agreement as he started grinding against that spot inside of me, never giving me enough time to recover from the waves of pleasure he was creating before causing another one. My hand on my self had become slack, my touches not even being needed to experience the pleasure any more, more adding to the indescribable feeling I was having from him rocking inside of me. In all honesty, I had begun to think that whole G spot thing was a myth because it hadn’t felt bad before, but it wasn’t like people had made out. Fucking hell was I wrong though, I was so on the edge I was having to bite his shoulder to stop myself screaming out his name. I always thought the noises people made in sex had to be exaggerated, but mine weren’t. I forgot we weren’t alone in the house as I began moaning repeatedly every time he fucking moved or stroked myself, which he only encouraged with his own noises.  
“Fuck,” he whimpered into the crevice of my neck, biting on my collar bone in the process. His voice was hot and croaky like he couldn’t take anymore, and that only sent me over the edge. He hit that spot inside me one last time just as I squeezed the head on my dick as hot liquid poured out of me in an oblivion of pleasure. For those few seconds, I saw fucking stars as I clenched my eyes shut and with my free hand, gripped his back so hard that I definitely left a mark.  
“Fuck me, you’re so hot,” he groaned as I panted from under him trying to recover from the pleasure he had just caused to radiate throughout my body. I rode the last few waves of an orgasm as he just reached the brink of his. My whole body pulsed and twitched around him causing the muscles in his stomach to tighten as he bit down on my neck hard and I felt him release inside of me. It should have been gross, but that was the last thing I was thinking. All I could do was appreciate how we’d discovered a new world together that no one else was invited to, and if I wasn’t so fucking exhausted, I would have done it again.  
He moaned hot and loud as his thrusting became more laboured and jagged as he finished, his beautiful face scrunching up in euphoria that I fucking caused him. Once he had finished completely, he collapsed happily on top of me sighing happily mumbling something about never wanting to move.

For a second, I stroked his hair as we recovered, himself just laying inside of me until he got the energy to move.  
“I love you,” he muttered into my chest as he finally pulled out. Without him, I felt empty, but I knew from the animistic urge he was showing in his eyes, it wouldn’t be long before I could feel him again.  
“I love you too,” my stomach fluttered as I confessed my truths to him into the darkness.  
“Shit,” he giggled lying back on my chest “we’re still on the wrong side of the bed.”  
“Oops,” I let out a breathy laugh, circling patterns on his bare back. I enjoyed just touching him, it reminded me that he was real and alive.  
“Frankie,” he mumbled into the darkness.  
“Yeah?”  
“It’s never felt like that before, like ever. I just want you to know, I really fell for you and I didn’t even notice,” he sighed into me. His words were tired and not thought out, but they filled me with more excitement than anything he had ever said. He told me had fallen for me, and fuck, I was already in deep with him. I could not find confessions to match his own, so instead, I pulled him to lazily kiss me, running my tongue against his own with no real rhythm at all, but just needing him.

It was more than sex to me because he had seemingly just resuscitated me. Just because a car can run on an almost empty tank, doesn’t mean that you should let it. When a car is running on fumes, all the vile shit and toxins from the tank get into the engine and can fuck it up forever, writing the thing off before it even gets the chance to fill up again with fresh petrol, which was like how I had been merely breathing on my last remaining fumes. I had been lucky though, he had come and filled me up and suddenly I was no longer running on empty fumes, I was running on his love. His affection and adornment were the crispest, purest form of fuel to me, and it could make me drive on forever. I fell asleep with his warm body wrapped up in mine kissing him at the wrong side of the bed never feeling so full in all of my life.


	49. I played with your heart, I could treat you better but I'm not that smart

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Thank you everyone for sticking with me and my slow updates at the minute 💜 
> 
> ALSO if u have a minute, you should check out cryptic.jeggings on instagram bcos they did something loosely based on this and AM and I love it and they are really talented!!
> 
> The song for this chapter is I'm a ruin by Marina and it is a big FAT mood
> 
> Okay thanku back to the fluff...

I woke up to warm kiss placed upon my lips to sing to me that this was all real, and he was still here to remind me of that. I fluttered my eyes awake with the kisses, but could not fight the smile spreading across my face enough to deepen it.  
“Got you a coffee,” he smiled down at me hazily passing me something welcoming in a Starbucks cup.  
“When did you get this?” I grabbed it greedily from his hands, not even having the time to truly show him my gratitude.  
“I’ve been up for a while,” he shrugged settling beside me back into the bed.  
“Yeah, you don’t even have your car and the weather- Gerard! Do not tell me you risked your life in this weather to get me a God Damn coffee!”  
“You’re so melodramatic, Frank,” he rolled his eyes, “but no, your Dad took me.”  
“Oh,” I responded.  
“Yeah, I went to go pee this morning and he was going to get some breakfast for your mom, so I went with him.”  
“You’re the best,” I smiled, feeling no sense of awkwardness. The thoughts of last night sent flutters through my brain right down to my stomach, and the despite the twinge of pain I felt from inside of me, I just wanted it to happen all over again.

For a few moments, we just sat in silence, drinking and staring at each other because no words seemed worthy of this moment. I wanted to spill my heart out to him, but every time I tried, I got lost in the deep pools that were his eyes.  
“We need to talk-“ we both said at the same time, the silence between us screaming too loud for us not to notice it. I missed the poetic twang that his voice possessed, and how his words could be spun like gold to cloak me with security; even if that security may be fleeting.  
“You first,” I said, begging him with my utterance to take the lead for me to follow. Despite last nights confessions, I was always so fucking nervous that he was just going to turn around and tell me he did not mean it, I mean, he had gotten what he had wanted, surely I was no use to him now. I knew him and his routine too well, and that brought me no comfort. He would always speak to a girl, get her affections and then would deny her love. He didn’t want love, he wanted physical sensations. The way he felt the constant need to be near me that morning though screamed sincerity to me, and that was both exciting and terrifying. With every circle he traced on my hand that was placed on the bed, came every beat of my heart as if he was my life support machine, and I feared what would happen if he withdrew his contact.  
“Bug,” he sighed heavily, “I dunno how to say this, I’m not good at discussing my feelings.”  
“I’m not _them_ , G,” I responded a little agitatedly. I wasn’t even sure who ‘them’ were, I think I just meant everybody from his past, his friends, the girls, fucking everyone.  
“I know, fuck, do you think I don’t know that? That’s the fucking problem, Frank!”  
“If this is gonna work, you’re gonna have to be honest with me,” I said go him sincerely. I didn’t really understand why felt so exposed when I was laying there with only a blanket draped around me, but he was acting as if it was him who had no clothes on. He was wearing mine that he had obviously changed into whilst I was still sleeping, his own still being tossed into a sodden pile on the floor, but he might as well have been naked with the look written all over his face because it was a tell-tale sign of how exposed he felt.  
“Okay, but can you not respond till I’ve done? Just please don’t look at me or anything!”  
“But Ger-“  
“ _Frank_!” He complained tossing his head back in frustration.  
“Fine,” I mimicked zipping my mouth shut to show him I was listening. I had an awful habit ever since I was younger of talking for him, simply for the purpose of protecting him. He wasn’t a nervous little kid anymore though, and this was the one thing that I could not decide or annunciate for him.  
“Okay,” he visibly gulped as if I was holding a gun to his head, which I assumed he would seemingly prefer to this. “How the fuck do I start this?” He chuckled to himself like some private joke before unlocking his overworked brain for the first time in years.  
“I’m not like you, Frank, I’m not a good person,” he avoided my eyes as I tried to interrupt him with protests. I restrained myself though, my breath becoming hitched in my throat with the effort written on his face. “I don’t know why, but like, every time someone likes me like that it really fucking freaks me out. I don’t even have an explanation for why I do the things I do other than something takes over me, and I just can’t help it! I hate the thought of getting married, I hate the thought of having kids and I hate the thought of dying with somebody! The most fucked up thing about it all though is, I still want all that. I freak out because I just want to be happy and normal, but I can’t! The thought of someone committing themselves to me scares the shit outta me, but so does being alone! I’ve tried so many times, bug, but nothing ever fucking works. Every time they try and hug me or kiss me I wanna run, God knows why.”  
I mean, I was glad he was finally confiding in me about his obvious commitment issues but that was not what I wanted to talk about. I didn’t want to know about the numerous girls he had slept with, nor the way he blatantly struggled to care about playing them. He fucking knew it was wrong to lead people on, but he just couldn’t stop himself, only really feeling guilty about it because other people told him he should, but never meaning it genuinely.  
“I know you think cocaine is the worst drug I’m addicted to, but it’s not, it’s attention. Actually, you know fucking what? It isn’t even that, it’s you!”  
“H-huh?” I frowned.  
“Their attention kept me occupied for a little while, but in the end, it means jack shit and is never enough! That day on my bed, I just gave in for the first time because I just wanted to kiss you. I wanted to feel your lips so badly that it drove me to do reckless things to make up for the fact that I couldn’t! Well, I thought that I couldn’t, but then you kissed me back and you just made me more confused! Wait- I don’t mean you’re to blame, this is completely my fault, but you fucking send me over the edge, Frank, you always have.”  
“But it’s just new attention to you, right?” I said snidely.  
“No! That’s the thing, I don’t feel creeped out when you touch me, well I do but-“  
“ _Woah, thanks_ ,” I responded flatly and sarcastically.  
“Hey, you said you wouldn’t interrupt me!” He responded quickly, getting more flustered with every word he fought to say. I could tell that it was hard for him to be so honest, but I wasn’t there to be squished under his foot like an actual bug. “I didn’t mean you creep me out, I just mean I’m creeped out because I’m actually not creeped out by you, you know what I’m saying?”  
“No,” I frowned.  
“I love you, Frank, and I have never loved anybody. That’s fucking scary, especially when you’re supposed to be my best friend!”  
“Don’t say this to me because you wanna fuck again-“  
“Frank!” He snapped louder than before, taking me back a little with his sharpness. “I don’t know what this is, I don’t wanna get ahead of myself and drop down on one knee right now, yano? I’m just- fuck it,” he quickly finished his sentence and launched at me, covering my lips in an open-mouthed kiss. As much as I wanted to fight him off and declare my own love for him, his warm lips just felt too fucking good to stop. The soft cotton of the tracksuit pants he was wearing rubbed against my naked body as he kissed me as I became totally consumed by him again. The feeling of him actually loving me back was undesirable, even if I knew in my mind it was probably a fleeting feeling for him. I didn’t know how many other people he had spouted the same speech to about never loving anybody else, but I figured I couldn’t have been the only one. If I was stronger, I would have walked away, but I fucking wasn’t and I was finally getting what I had always wanted even if it was only going to leave me more scarred in the long run.

He took my body’s cue for him as he gripped my waist tightly, kissing down my jaw to my neck, nibbling softly at the tight skin there as I exposed it more to him.  
“I love you too, yano?” I managed to mumble out before I got too lost in him. Just like in the night, things were easier to confess in fits of passion. If I had been sat there fully clothed without his hands exploring under my heavy winter duvet, I may not have been so quick to admit my weaknesses, but it was like I became somebody else when he fucking touched me like that.  
“Yeah?” I felt him grin against my skin. “You’re just saying that because you’re a virgin and you fall in love quickly, so I’m not that honoured.” He chuckled as he said it, but it still agitated me he thought he got to decide something like that for me.  
“Am I?” I frowned at him although he couldn’t see me, but merely being confused that he seemed to have forgotten last nights events. I mean, my body fucking hadn’t, I ached all over but every twinge I felt reminded me of him, and made me giddy all over again.  
“Half a virgin,” he smirked, looking up at me with dark eyes from under the hair that was plastered on his forehead.  
“Wh-what?” I stuttered, his gaze turning me into a bumbling fool like it always fucking did,  
“Well, last night I thought I’d let you take one for the team and find out if it felt good, yano? But you’ve left enough fuckin’ scratch marks on my back for me to know you probably didn’t fake that.”  
“You’re such a cocky mother fucker,” I rolled my eyes at him but did not have the heart nor mental strength to push myself away from him and his soft kisses on my collar bone between his words.  
“Not being cocky, just saying we can switch sometime, if you wanna do it again that is.”  
“Erm,” I didn’t want to look too eager and scream a big fat yes in his face, so instead took the lead for once and pulled him by his hair back up to my lips.

We kissed for so long that our coffee went cold and our lips almost became numb. His hand was placed firmly on my thigh never daring to inch that bit closer to the part of me that we both knew I wanted him to touch again. He did this thing where he liked to make me wait for everything, like I couldn’t get him wriggling and begging for me just as easily. He liked to play the experienced card a lot, but he never had the patience to back it up. It did make me a little big-headed, but it wasn’t exactly like he was modest about his sexual skills so I didn't see why I had to be. Finally, he began to move his hand closer and closer until I heard something that nobody would ever want to hear when they were about to fuck the love of their life.  
“Frankie, darling!” My mother called cheerily as if I didn’t hate her fucking guts at that moment. She tapped lightly on my bedroom door in her usual three melodic knocks waiting until I called a weak yes before coming in because, she had almost caught me changing one too many times before. If she had not waited for that yes whilst Gerard shot off my body to the other side of the room, fumbling with a football keyring I had pretending it had been occupying, then she probably would have seen a lot more than me without a shirt on. I had no time to find pants without her getting suspicious as to why I was not answering the door, after all, it was just me and my best friend in the room, so I just had to wrap the duvet around me as a shield.  
“Have you not dragged him up yet, G?” My mother tutted at my assumed laziness.  
“He’s only just woken up,” Gerard fake rolled his eyes, managing to quickly throw a wink in my direction without my mom seeing.  
“Frank! Get up, me and your dad have just made you both lunch!”  
“Yeah, I’ll be down in a second,” I tried to shake her off.  
“It’s past 12! Why won’t you come? It’s on the table!”  
I clutched my duvet protection consciously as I saw Gerard's evil smirk behind her as she came over to my bed and attempted to pull me out of it.  
“Yeah, Frank, get up!” He mockingly whined at me whilst coming over and pulling at my arm.  
“Gerard,” I hissed. It was if he wanted us to be caught because my mother would undoubtedly ask why I was naked when I was supposed to be sharing a bed with him.  
“Come on, babe, it’s your favourite!” My mom added.  
“Yeah, your favourite!” Gerard mocked further.  
“I’ll be one second!” I snapped loudly.  
“Woah, come on May let’s leave Mr grouchy to join us when he’s in a better mood!” Gerard began to lead my mother out of the room, but not before poking out his pink tongue at me like a razor as I scowled at him.

When I finally got clothes on for the first time that morning, I bombed it downstairs and tackled the fucker to the sofa he was stood next to, taking him by surprise.  
“You’re such a dick, G,” I whined poking at his sides harshly, but only making him giggle harder.  
“What are you gonna fuckin’ do about it?” He laughed thrashing his limbs beneath me, never quite managing to get me off of him.  
“This,” I replied full intending to bite his smug face but instead ending up kissing him. Each peck I knew was too dangerous for comfort, but there was nothing I could do to stop myself from deepening the kiss. My mind was screaming at me to get away from him because my mother was in the next room, but there was just something too enticing about him.  
“Boys, dinners ready,” I heard a lower voice than expected from behind us as I rolled off Gerard quicker than a fucking Concorde. I glanced around anxiously to my father stood there, his usual expression on his face. He couldn’t have seen anything, right? He probably just thought we had been play fighting like we often were because his expression did not suggest he had just caught his son doing something as drastic as kissing his male best friend. My cheeks were hot and flushed, but I tried to respond a ‘coming’ as normally as possible before following him out of the room.

Gerard seemed unbothered, but I was still paranoid my father had seen more than he should have done. However, our lunch seemed to be pretty anticlimactic. I was expecting my father to turn around and ask me why the fuck I had my tongue shoved down Gerard’s throat to the point I was almost waiting for it, but it never came. Instead, he sat and engaged in conversation about Gerard’s precious car and my Mother's new book club.  
“Are you okay, son?” He frowned at me as my mother began to gather the plates around us and Gerard helped her like the suck-up he was.  
“Yeah,” I squeaked, “why?”  
“You seem a little quiet, that’s all,” he smiled warmly at me gratefully accepting the warm kiss my mother placed on his stubbled cheek as she leant over him to grab his finished plate. “Thank you, my dear!”  
“Yeah, thanks mom,” I mumbled as herself and Gerard disappeared into the kitchen with the washing up.  
“Late night?” My dad raised an eyebrow.  
“Not too late.”  
“When did Gerard even get here? It’s just I didn’t hear him come in, that’s all…”  
“Oh, maybe like 12? I don’t know,” I glared down at the placemat like it held all the answers for me.  
“Cool,” My dad responded. “Right, I’m going to shovel some snow in the garden I’ll see you later.”  
“See you, Dad,” I almost sighed in relief as he got up and his interrogation appeared to be over. I was still overly anxious that he had seen something, despite his questions not being particularly out of the ordinary.  
“Oh, and Frank?” He turned back just as he was about to leave the room.  
“Yeah, dad?”  
“If you’re going to invite boys through your window in the dead of night, can you do it when it’s not snowing please? I wouldn't want somebody to get hurt on my watch,” he smirked, knowingly.  
“Wh-what?” My blood ran as cold as the snow falling from the sky outside.  
“He left footsteps on the roof,” he chuckled as if it was fucking funny, “and we all know how terrible that boys footwork is, I just wouldn’t want him to slip, that's all,” he shrugged and left. My Father's words left a hot and sticky atmosphere in there air and paranoia came creeping back. He did not indicate anything was wrong, but I had no idea as to why he did not question as to why Gerard was crawling through my window in the dead of night, in the middle of a snowstorm. I couldn’t believe we had both been as stupid as to leave footprints on the roof, but it had been dark and I had been pretty preoccupied with other things.

—-

“Frank, relax, man!” Gerard tried to shake off my worries as he wrapped one of my scarfs around his neck tightly. “He knows we do stupid shit together, climbing on someone's roof does not automatically mean they’re fucking!”  
“But he was acting weird!”  
“Well, that must be where you get your weirdness from.”  
“Gerard, I’m serious!” I whined. “If he knows, he’ll tell my mom and then she’ll tell your mom, and then everyone will fucking know!”  
“So what if they do?” He raised an eyebrow, walking over to where I was pacing and stilling me with his strong arms.  
“I dunno I just-“  
“Whatever will be will fuckin’ be my little cherub,” he smirked and placed a fat, wet kiss on the tip of my nose.  
“You’re annoying you know that, right?” I sighed leaning into his open arms.  
“And you’re cute. Now, it’s your friends who you’re dragging me out in this ice age to meet so, get ya fucking coat on!”  
“Fine,” I grumbled but was secretly glad he had been able to calm my nerves. He was right, if my dad had seen anything, my mom would have definitely burst in by now to ask her overprotective questions. I didn’t want them to ask anything because I didn’t have answers for them, I didn’t know what this was anymore than they did, and I didn’t want her intrusiveness to scare Gerard and his commitment-phobic ways off. To calm me down, Gerard had accepted an invitation from Kenny on my behalf to come and watch a Christmas movie. He had heard my phone buzz in my paranoid state and had typed out a clear yes before I could snatch it back. In actual fact, I had wanted to carry out our activities that my mother had interrupted, not sit and hear Kenny gush about Maisie, but I guessed I could deal with it as long as Gerard came. He had agreed without any protests, so like the minion I was, I got my big, winter coat on.

The walk to Kenny’s was enough to chase any worries from my mind, Gerard slipping everywhere like fucking Bambi on ice as the snow from this morning had begun to freeze around us. I had gotten a little too cocky, and laughed a little too hard and had ended up falling on my ass that already hurt. It had left my sides sore with laughter though as I dragged Gerard down on top of me, much to his annoyance. He never seemed to stay irritated for long though, never unlacing our fingers even when I was done hauling him to his feet. I was so fucking happy that I didn’t even think a lead balloon could have dragged me from that cloud I was on.

“Gerard!” Kenny said a little taken back when he answered the door to find us both standing there.  
“It was alright if I came, right, bro?” Gerard grinned down at my friend who was just as star-struck as he always was in his presence.  
“Yes! Of course! Come in, come in!” Kenny said stepping aside letting Gerard and his abundance of scarves into his hallway with me trailing behind, attempting to knock the snow off my boots as I went.  
“Guys, Gerard’s here!” Kenny called into the living room to my other friends. They were all huddled under warm blankets with hot chocolate, Kenny’s mother’s speciality, even Matt. James’ face of thunder contradicted the warm environment too much for my liking, so I skipped over and ruffled his hair whilst Gerard was busy helping Kenny bring in the snacks his mother had prepared for us.  
“Gerard’s here?” Matt smirked slyly, interrupting the play fight that was about to break out between me and James.  
“Yes! Friends watch movies together, Matt,” I rolled my eyes.  
“Yeah, friends watch movies together, they don’t suck each other off though.”  
“Matt!” Harry slapped his arm.  
“What? I just want to know if there's any gossip for me!”  
“Unfortunately for you Matty, we’re still just friends,” I said trying to sound a little sad. I didn’t want my friends to know the truth yet, I wanted to keep him my little secret for just that little bit longer. Plus, I didn’t think I could face the embarrassment of having to tell them he’d inevitably fucked me over again, especially with James’ ‘I told you so’ gaze.  
“Boring,” he yawned. “Well, unlike you Frankie boy, someone got laid last night!”  
“You?”  
“He wishes,” Harry snorted.  
“Harry then?” I frowned.  
“Nope!”  
“Nathan?”  
“Naaah.”  
I glanced over at James and visibly gulped like the jealous freak that I was. It wasn’t necessarily a strong, recognisable envy, it was more that I felt weird that he had moved on. I didn’t want James, I just hoped I wasn’t in that mindset that I didn’t want anyone else to have him either, because I knew first hand, that was unfair. I wanted James to be happy, but it was still awkward for me to hear about.  
“No, he’s salty because he’s the only big virgin left in the group,” Matt smirked earning a cushion to the face from James.  
“You are not telling me Kenny actually touched a girls boob,” I shuddered at the thought.  
“Not just a boob, Franks,” Harry giggled.  
“Jesus,” I stated in disbelief. Kenny was a little baby to me, he was not one to be having sex and staying out all night. The fact that the house was still intact, and that Maisie was still breathing suggested to me that Kenny’s mother did not know anything about her son's love life from the night before.  
“ _Shhh_!” Kenny confirmed my suspicions of his mom being in the dark as he rushed back in with a tray full of freshly baked cookies and Gerard, who looked just as shocked as I did.  
“My boys now a man,” Gerard shoved his arm around Kenny, making him blush with pride.

——

Due to unfortunate circumstances, I ended up being stuck between Gerard and James watching Elf. Even if James had known that Gerard and I were a little bit more than friends now, I didn’t think I would have thrown it in his face with our affections anyway. That didn’t mean to say that Gerard wasn’t making it increasingly more difficult with the way he rested his cheek on my shoulder, whispering thing he shouldn’t be into my ear as I tried to distract myself with the cringey Christmas film.  
“You need to stop,” I hissed down at him as he pressed a secret kiss into the crook of my neck, sending shivers all down my spine.  
“Why?” He whispered with a false innocence dripping in his voice.  
“Because!”  
“Shut the fuck up, I’m watching this!” Nathan grumbled, becoming engrossed in the film that did not match his masculine exterior.  
“Yeah shut up, Frankie,” he mumbled against my skin, dipping his tongue over it with an open-mouthed kiss straight after. I didn’t have the heart to move away, instead just exposed the skin more to him.  
“Well, I’m going to have to turn the light on anyway,” Kenny grumbled getting to his feet and turning the light on, much to Nathan's annoyance. “I can’t crochet in the dark! I’m sorry Nathan, I’ve tried!”  
With the new intrusive light, Gerard simply turned his head as if it was nothing, and continued to pretend to watch the film.  
“What you doing, Ken?” He asked him, not being able to stay occupied in the film for longer than five seconds. I didn’t want to throw accusations about Gerard, but I was sure he had bipolar tendencies. Some days he would hide away, wanting the world to fuck off, right along with everybody else in it. Others though, he was this over-friendly, enthusiastic person who was hyperactive and lacked an attention span. I didn’t think he was necessarily manic that night, maybe just a little hypomanic his decisions reckless, but a little less harmful than I had seen him previously be. I always knew when Gerard was high up in terms of his mood because he just became somebody else, he would clean his room like a fucking expectant mother nesting, he would get enough sleep and he would light up a fucking room with his presence. It was exhausting keeping up with Gerard, but those moments of clarity were worth every second of it. I sat and smiled at him whilst Kenny tried to teach him his new hobby that Maisie had shown him, fucking crocheting. Kenny was trying his hardest to make Maisie a small, baby pink teddy bear and teach Gerard how to make one simple knot at the same time, and it didn’t help they both fucking sucked at it. They both ended up bundled tightly in streams of yarn, and floods of tears of laughter as the whole fucking thing unravelled and tumbled past their feet. We had all long ago given up watching the film because Gerard could grab anybody's attention when he was like this, being much more entertaining than anything a screen could provide.  
“Sorry, Ken,” He said sheepishly once they had stopped laughing.  
“It’s fine, G! To say sorry for completely ruining my bear though you can come and pick the pizzas up with me.”  
“But it’s freezing! Can you not get a delivery?” Gerard whined like the princess he was, because cold weather and Gerard simply did not go together.  
“They’re not delivering because of the weather, I already checked when he tried to drag me out with him,” Harry said.  
“So, you go with him! I’ll stay here in the warmth with Frank!”  
“Nah, man, you ruined his knitting!” Harry giggled.  
“It’s _crocheting,_ not knitting!” Kenny grumbled. “Come on, G, I need to ask you some stuff anyway!” He skipped happily, linking Gerard’s arm.

**\- Fuckin sex education with Kenny and it’s all your fault**

Gerard text me as I settled back down under a warm blanket, laughing at the thought of him stuck in the snow answering Kenny’s inquisitive thoughts about the female anatomy.

 **\- How is it my fault?**  
I responded.

**\- It’s not… Just would rather be alone with uuuuuuu**

“What are you smiling at, Frank?” Matt asked loudly causing everyone's stares to land on me and my big fucking grin.  
“None of your business!” I quickly snatched my phone into my pocket, but it was too late, he had smelt blood and he was coming for it. “Fuck off, Matt!” I snapped as he climbed on top of me making grabby hands at my locked phone. He knew the passcode because of all those times I had insisted he played songs off my playlist whenever we had a speaker, and God, did I suddenly regret being such a musically arrogant prick and wish that I’d just let him play his fucking Travis Scott album.  
“Come on, Frankie boy, let me just have a little look at who you’re texting,” he smirked as he wriggled his hands into my hoodie pocket.  
“Suck my dick, Matt, no!” I squirmed underneath him, despite my body’s protests. Yes, the pleasure I had felt last night had been totally worth the tenderness to my body I had at that moment, but Matt jumping on top of me was making it worse.  
“If you’re not hiding something, then why won’t you let me see? Your phone is as dry as a Maisie probably was last night with Kenny’s shit sex game.”  
“That is fucking grim, Matt,” Nathan groaned from where he was sat on the floor.  
“What? It’s true!”  
“I just think you’re a nosey fucker, now get off!” I wriggled particularly hard, causing me to jolt in pain and grimace as it shot through my body in a wave of discomfort.  
“Woah, why are you wincing, fuck head?” He smirked evilly. I didn’t know how Matt knew things, he just always fucking did.  
“I’m not!” I lied through gritted teeth as he continued to prod at my side so I had to lift my lower body just to get him to stop, which of course, caused more pain.  
“Ay, you definitely are! Harry, he can’t sit down properly, look!” He cackled like a fucking witch as I became a fucking spectacle to them.  
“Did you get fucked last night?” Harry smirked in the same way as Matt as they met eyes and uncovered all of my secrets.  
“No!”  
“Bullshit! He fucked you, didn’t he?” Matt laughed.  
“No!”  
“Okay then, let me read your phone!”  
“Fucking fine, but don’t breathe a fucking word, we were supposed to not tell anyone,” I grumbled finally sitting up as Matt got off me.  
“You fucking little slut!” He grinned widely, ruffling my hair as I blushed profusely, trying to ignore the way that I could see James’ heart visibly break.  
“Shut up!” I hissed.  
“So, was his dick so big that you can’t sit down?”  
“Stop being fucking grim!” I glared.  
“Did it feel good?”  
“Obviously,” I rolled my eyes and crossed my arms in a huff, even though I was gushing slightly like a twelve-year-old girl with her first crush.

I got an abundance of questions whilst James got up and busied himself with helping Kenny’s mother with something apparently. I knew he just didn’t want to hear about the truth, but once I had begun to tell them, I just couldn’t stop. I tossed James’ feelings to the side like Gerard had done to mine one too many times before, but becoming too lost in the game of love to care.  
“ _BOOOOY, you got me walking side to side_ ,” Matt sang for the fifteenth time in reference to what I had disclosed to him. It wouldn’t have been a problem if he just knew any fucking line except for that one, even I knew more than that, and I didn’t even fucking like Ariana fuckin' Grande.

“Foods here!” Kenny called cheerily as he walked in closely followed by a stressed-out looking Gerard carrying enough pizza boxes that he could barely see over the top of them. He looked salty, the cold weather leaving a red sting on his nose and cheeks, but still looking fucking beautiful. I got up to go and help him, earning a snigger from Matt, Harry and Nathan behind me.  
“Careful, Franks, don’t hurt yourself,” Matt giggled childishly.  
“What? What’s everyone staring at?” Gerard said as he self consciously touched his face once I had helped him to put the pizzas down on the coffee table. I couldn’t find the words to tell them that they knew everything, instead, I just blinked back at him sheepishly whilst Matt and Harry continued to hum that fucking _Side to Side_ song in the background, the one about getting dicked so hard that you couldn't walk straight.  
“Oh cool! Ariana Grande!” Kenny grinned innocently joining in singing the song that they were taunting me with at the top of his little lungs, as I saw it click in Gerard’s head that they knew, and that last night was no longer our little secret.


	50. I don't have you here with me, but at least I have the memories. I try to make it through the night, but I can't control my mind

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> HAPPY 200,000 W0RDS!! Thank you for sticking with me and my rambling mess even though there's quite a bit of the plot left (oops)
> 
> Anyway another boring English slang lessons;
> 
> \- Calling someone a Tory is (to me anyway) an insult bcos it's basically calling someone a snob for liking right wing politics 
> 
> \- Pres are predrinks and I don't know if other countries call it that?? Where you drink at someones house because you go to a club because it's cheaper and then you don't have to go to town sober 
> 
> \- Calling someone My G is actually like an endearment term for friends haha so that is what Joe says
> 
> Ps. I don't know why they say mom if they live in Manchester and not mum but I wrote it at the start and it would be weird to change it this far in haha sorry for the inaccuracies
> 
> Sorry for the Ariana overload with the chapter's song but the mention of her in the last chapter reminded of this song

“HAPPY BIRTHDAY, YOU OLD MOTHER FUCKER!” I yelled at the top of my lungs pouncing on him as soon as the clock hit 9 AM. I was usually an early riser due to soccer, but with the lack of practice and the increasing amount of time that Gerard and I were spending in bed together, those mornings were getting later by the day. Still, 9 AM was an ungodly hour for Gerard on a school break, even on the most important birthday of his life. If truth be told, I had been fucking dreading this day for the longest of time because, without the restraints of his age, I knew he could be lethal both to me and himself. He stole his Father’s bourbon and Dean would often buy him cheap vodka from the store, but that always meant he had limits that he could not help, and therefore could not change. Now those protective barriers had gone he could go to any convince store at any time and drink himself to death, which I did not feel was an exaggeration. If Gerard drank beer and shit like that he was fine, but with spirts, he just wouldn’t fucking stop. He had gotten lucky to be honest, passing out before the vile toxins took over his blood completely, but now I wasn’t so sure. Selfishly, I was also bothered now that he was allowed free reign with the girls in the night, the ones with low inhibitions just like him. Gerard had used Dean’s ID for a while now, but that was at shitty bars and questionable cigarette merchandisers, never getting away with it with the clubs in town with their scanner which would clearly show it was not his picture-perfect face in that tiny black and white driver’s license photo. Now though, his ID was that fucking key he had been waiting for, unlocking all those doors I did not want him to open. When we were a lot younger, I used to hate that he was four days older than I was because it always meant he got to choose which Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle he was first in our games, because of course, his age automatically made him dominant. That was nothing to the sinking feeling I had now though with those few steps he was ahead of me he was, because it meant I could not follow him into town tonight like I so desperately wanted to. It was not Joe or any of his moronic friends who were keeping me inside, pacing manically as I tried to not to imagine all the dreadful things he could be doing, it was my stupid age and the big fat seventeen-years screaming on my own ID. He had promised me he didn’t even want to go out, but it was a mere tradition amongst his friends that he could not break, and that he was so preoccupied with being in love with me that no girl in town would be able to drag his attention away. I wanted to believe him, I really fucking did, but it was difficult. I tried to bask in the day because it was in the morning light that I did not have to share him with his self-destructive habits.  
“Get off,” he grumbled crankily as I proceeded to climb all over him and smother him in warm birthday kisses. Despite his protests, he did not push me away but instead scrunched his face up, clutching my waist in the process to keep me in place. It had been only a few days since we had rekindled our affair, but my confidence had grown just like my love for him. Each day I thought of it as fucking impossible to love him any more, but somehow I would fall into bed every night aching for him just that little bit extra. I didn't even find that comforting because falling for him was fucking scary when he claimed to want me back, it only made me more attached.  
“Hey, G, because you’re getting older your circadian rhythm should be changing which means you should be an early riser now!” I said with my lips pressed against his cheek.  
“It’s way too fucking early for your psychology lesson bullshit,” he sighed sleepily, trying and failing to close his eyes and go back to sleep.  
“Well, get up and I’ll stop! I need to give you your present!”  
“Present?” His eyes shot open in the same way they had done for years when I mentioned presents.  
“Of course,” I jumped off him happily as I rummaged around in my backpack looking for the envelope I had stuffed in there.  
“Frank, I told you not to! I know Grimshaw gives you some money for helping out with those kids and shit but I told you, you need to spend that on driving lessons, not me!” He spieled off the same shit even though I knew if I had not gotten him a present, he would have been fucking mardy about it.  
“I was always going to get you a present, G, shut the fuck up!” I rolled my eyes at him.  
“It would be a big enough present if I didn’t have to taxi your ass everywhere!” He snapped back but made grabby hands for the crumpled envelope I was holding over his head suggesting that he definitely did want my gift to him.  
“Ay, I’ll give it to you if you give me a kiss,” I tapped my cheek, holding it just out of his reach knowing full well he was too lazy to reach up from where he was lying to actually grab it.  
“Frank!” He whined impatiently but pressed his lips quickly to my cheek before snatching the envelope and hastily opening it.  
“Be careful, you’ll fucking rip it!” I said pointlessly as he was already in the fucking thing and was pulling out the two tickets that were in there.  
“You fucking didn’t!” He yelled in a high pitched voice, finally getting to his knees on the mattress.  
“I fucking did!” I replied smugly knowing Joe’s shitty bag of birthday coke could not compare to the tickets I had managed to scavenge.  
“Fucking Morrissey, Frank?” He beamed at me. “You hate Morrissey!”  
“I do not!” I protested, even though I kind of did. Despite the old fuck-heads backwards morals, Gerard could not deny the way his fingers always tapped when _You Have Killed me_ came shuffle on his old Spotify playlist.

“How did you even get these?” He asked in disbelief as he stroked the tickets as if they could disintegrate in his fingers at any moment.  
“Ah, it was nothing,” I shrugged waving him off, even though it was a lie. I had used my own, both of my parents and Grimshaw’s priority code to get those bastard things and had woken up at 5 AM one morning just to secure the over-priced fuckers. For a man that was supposedly now increasingly unpopular, his tickets for his hometown gig in Manchester had sold old incredibly quickly.  
“I literally love you so fucking much that it hurts,” he launched me into a strong hug that knocked me off my knees, the tickets becoming discarded beside us as he kissed my face over and over in gratitude. Suddenly, that disgustingly early morning in the online ticket queue was totally worth it, even if I did still think Morrissey was kind of an asshole.  
“Be careful,” I grumbled not truly meaning it, “you’ll rip them!”  
“I can’t have that, can I now? How else would me and Joe get into the concert?” He smirked down at me.  
“Gerard, you better be fucking joking!”  
“Of course I am! Do you think Delo would hold me the way you can when he sings those Smiths songs?” He giggled, rolling over and happily humming _Cemetery Gates_ under his breath.

The day passed too quickly for my liking, and having to share him with his family only made it go that bit quicker. I had to smile though when his somewhat wealthy grandparents came over and dropped him a cheque he was reluctant to show me.  
“Tory,” I smirked once I had finally snatched it from his hands and saw the sizeable sum they had gifted him.  
“Don’t call me that! I’m pretty sure they’re just drip-feeding me my inheritance anyway, so it won’t get taxed!” He fumed at me snatching it back and placing it safely in his dressing gown pocket. Oh, how I fucking wished that Joe could see that his little street-wise best friend wasn’t as hard done by as he made out.  
“Keep telling yourself that, _Tory_ ,” I giggled.  
“You’re one to fucking talk Mr 5 bedroom townhouse,” he scoffed as if his house wasn’t exactly the same, if not a little bigger.  
Once everyone had left, I finally got him alone and repeated our act from the other night now that my body had recovered. For a second, he asked me if we wanted to switch positions but I could see from his eyes he was not ready for that. He still needed the dominance that came with being on top, the action not being too far removed from what he was used to. He insisted he was ready, but also made no protests to the way his body slotted perfectly on top of my own.

I lay there panting in his arms, basking in the waves of pleasure he had caused all over my body, as he stroked small circles with his thumb on our joined hands. We had not spoken in a little while, but the flickering candle from the corner of the room filled the air with enough presence that we both felt words were not particularly needed. I mean, I had bit and scratched him yelling I loved him enough only moments earlier, to say it again so soon would have perhaps made me seem a little desperate, even if that was exactly what I was.  
“ _Love of my life, you’ve hurt me, you’ve broken my heart and now you leave me. Love of my life can’t you see, bring it back, bring it back, don’t take it away from me because you don’t know what it means to me_ ,” he sang barely above a whisper into my hair in his melodic voice, his mind drifting miles away from reality. “What?” He asked self-consciously as I realised I had been craning my neck in an unnatural way just to stare at him.  
“I just love it when you sing,” I sighed happily, snuggling more into his bare chest.  
“Erm, Frank, weren’t you the one who said that was the worst Queen song after _Don’t Stop Me_   _Now_ because it was boring?” He chuckled to himself remembering my musically arrogant charged rant about the song not displaying Freddie Mercury’s vocals in the way he had been capable.  
“Yeah, but that was before you sang it!”  
“Oh, bug, you’re too kind to me, you know that, right?”  
“I am not!”  
“You’re biased,” he scoffed, doubting his talents like he always fucking did.  
“Yeah, but you know everyone in my music class likes your singing so it’s not just me.”  
“Joe doesn’t like it,” he giggled as if the fact Joe was trying to force him into a box in which he did not fit in to was funny.  
“Joe doesn’t know jack shit! You should sing more, G, it makes me happy!”  
“Yeah, I’ll sing more if you play for me more,” I could tell he rolled his eyes with the way he spoke.  
“I’ve been busy-“  
“Yeah, I’ve heard it all before, soccer comes before your guitar practice _blah fuckin’ blah_!”  
“Just because you don’t get it,” I tried to argue with his biases, even though I knew it was futile. When I had gone through my short-lived emo phase, I had insisted I took guitar lessons because I lacked the natural vocal ability that Gerard had, but I had still wanted to do something to get all those pre-pubescent angsty emotions out. I had loved it at the time, and the guy I took those lessons off had insisted that I continued because I apparently had picked it up quickly, but things changed and I had other priorities. I could never forget the look of disappointment on Gerard’s face when I had told him that my lessons had to be terminated because Grimshaw had added in extra practices now that I was captain, insisting I was throwing everything away. I had tried to tell him that playing _Sally Cinnamon_ to a crappy MIDI backing track non-stop could only get me so far, unlike soccer, but he was never ready to hear it. It was hypocritical anyway, he made no effort to explore his musical talents, despite nothing else but drugs and girls taking up his time.  
“I’m not having this argument again, but it is my last birthday wish to hear you play _I am the Resurrection_ just one last time,” he winked down at me, mocking the way I had sat there for hours trying to perfect the way my fingers would carelessly slide over the frets, sometimes hitting janky notes that would never make him cringe in the same way that it did me.  
“It was _Sally Cinnamon_ , Gerard,” I scoffed in mock horror, “and you call yourself a Mancunian.”  
“Erm, my family is actually originally from the South so I’ve never claimed to be this working-class miner you make out!”  
“Oh yeah, I forgot about your Tory grandparents,” I mocked him one last time as he flipped us over to over-power me and my cocky comments. He pinned my arms above my head but with no real malice behind his actions, instead, he nuzzled his nose against my own pressing a chaste kiss to my lips. The kiss did not stay almost platonic for long though, as he pressed his open mouth harder on my own dipping his tongue in and out of my mouth as my own tangled with his. Before things could get heated again, we were rudely interrupted with the vibrating of his phone by his side.  
“One second,” he mumbled dragging himself from my lips as if it was painful to detach us. Without him there, I felt empty, but not as empty as when I heard the husky voice on the receiver.  
“G man!” I heard Joe bark on the other end of the line. “Where have you been, birthday boy?”  
“With my family, bro!” He somewhat lied. I mean, he had been with his family for a while but he had conveniently left out the part about fucking me, but that wasn’t exactly surprising.  
“Well, me and the boys are coming to yours for pres for tonight!”  
“Okay, sound, but don’t bring any shit here because you know my mom will flip!” He said referring to the drugs I knew he was inevitably going to take. He hadn't needed them for the past few days but I was not there to protect him in the night and the vile spews of peer pressure that his friends gave him. I got it, I was over-bearing and patronising and that was before I was in even properly in love with him, but his past made me fiercely protective over him, and loving him just made that worse.  
“I make no promises my G. See you in an hour!” He hung before Gerard could even protest.  
“Shit,” he shot to his feet, “I gotta get ready!”  
“Why? Who are you trying to impress?” I rolled my eyes bitterly trying to ignore the cold side of the bed he left. He didn’t reply, he merely shrugged sheepishly, as if that would bring me any fucking comfort.

For someone who was not trying to attract attention to themselves, he was spending a suspicious amount of time on his hair. He had gotten his hair cut a couple of days ago into that God-awful skin-fade style all his friends supported, snipping off one of my favourite things about him to look just like everybody else. When I had told him that I had hated it, he called me hypocritical because Kenny had re-shaved the sides of my head. Yes, I had a grade one on the majority of my head, but my hairstyle was most definitely not Joe approved and we both knew that from the way he relentlessly mocked me for it for apparently looking like a greb.  
“For fuck’s sake,” he groaned as he tried for the seventh time to flatten the stray baby hairs that were sticking upon his head. He was wearing some Burberry shirt I knew wasn’t his style, and jeans when I knew he would have much preferred to be in his pyjama pants. He had practically poured his _Sauvage_ aftershave all over himself to drown the scent of sex off him, but it was nothing compared to his natural scent. I knew I was being bitter, but that wasn’t enough to stop me from hiding it.  
“If you’re gonna sit there with a face like a slapped arse, can you just fuck off home?” He snapped at me as I continued to scowl at him and his failed hairdressing attempts. I knew he was pissy because he was paranoid Joe would come early, but that wasn’t my problem. Both of our emotions were high and irate and threatening to ruin our perfect day together.  
“Don’t treat me like shit because you look like those year 7’s who have just discovered gel and how to spike their hair up for the first time,” I spat right back at him.  
“Why are you being difficult?” He fumed, projecting his feelings for himself right onto me.  
“Me being difficult?” I almost laughed. “You’re the one fucking off out tonight with your ever-so fucking delightful friends!”  
“Oh, not again, Frank,” he whined. “We already went through this a million times, stop being so fucking jealous!”  
“Well, last time you said that it turned out you were still fucking your ex-girlfriend so-“  
“Shut up! You still to this day see your weirdo mate who has a fucking weird crush on your and yet you don't see me making you feel bad about that!”  
“That is not the same thing!” I fumed.  
“How is it not?”  
“Well, you’ve not even properly broken up with Amber yet, so I still think you’re more in the wrong!” I complained, my emotions getting the best of me. I knew he hadn’t seen her, he had been glued to my side for the whole of the Christmas holidays, but I was still paranoid.  
“Yeah, because I haven’t seen her! I’m not breaking up with her over a text message, man! I told her I needed space, what more can I do?”  
“Why? It’s not like you haven’t done that before.”  
“I don’t get you, Frank! One minute you want me to be a better person and treat people with respect and the next you’re wanting me to be a cunt again! I can’t fucking win! You won't let me see her to breakup with her, not even for five minutes!”  
“I just want you to not fuck anybody else, is that too much to ask?” My voice wobbled as I confessed my insecurities I had worked to hide, aloud. I didn’t want him to know just how possessive I was of him, but he had forced it out of me with his festering, sharp responses. I had every reason not to trust him, especially on a night as big as that one.  
“Bug,” his voice instantly softened as he apprehensively approached his bed I was still lay on. “You know you mean more to me than anyone, right?”  
“Yeah, you say that but do you really mean it if you’re so willing to see other people?”  
“That was before I knew we both felt like this! I was confused, and you know that! I am not gonna just throw this away for some desperate girl in town who probably would only speak to me to get free coke anyway!”  
“You know they speak to you because you look the way you do,” I grumbled trying to turn away from him, but him not letting that happen as he cocked my chin up gently with his hand. The action was not new, but it still made my heart beat abnormally quickly.  
“You know, Frank, if something happened which meant that you got dragged away from me right now, I would never fucking kiss anybody else ever again just so that your lips were the last ones that touched mine. I would live the rest of my sad, little days alone just waiting to be reunited with you because anybody else would just make me feel even more lonely. You wanna know why? It’s because no one on this fucking planet, no one who has breathed any of this toxic shitty air could even compare to you. You’re too pure for me, too good for anybody who has ever lived, but for some fucked up reason you seem to devote your time to me, and do you know how that feels? It feels fucking amazing. Give me a cocktail of acid, weed, coke whatever, and it could still not make me feel as high as you do when you tell me that you love me. So don’t you dare sit there on your own tonight and question my loyalty to you. I know I fucked up before, but this is now and all I can beg of you is that you trust me when I say that you’re the only one who has my fucking heart, Frankie, and I never wanna give it to anybody else.”  
“Well then,” I blinked back at him unsure of how to match his confessions mainly for the fact my brain had gone weak and useless with how much he had made it swell with pride. The anger inside me instantly melted away with the apparent sincerity in his eyes, his words so tangible and real that I lost to the ability to think. “I guess that solves that issue, now come here and let me fix your fucking mop.”

I had managed to tame his hair that clearly had not wanted to sit in the hairstyle that did not suit his internal mannerisms enough to satisfy him. It baffled me that he could make that too-short buzz cut look good, but maybe that was caused by the way his eyes had rolled back as I had run my fingers against his scalp, and the way I was already weak for him. The five minutes I had left with him escaped me too quickly, time falling between our fingers like a liquid dripping out of our grasp; futile to try and hold on to, but we still gave it our best shot. It was dangerous, but we had spent just a little too long kissing goodbye on his doorstep, even though his friends could have spotted us at any time. We got cruelly dragged apart by the noise of gravel from his path crunching beneath another’s feet as somebody approached the front door.  
“Oh hey, Frank!” Ross said cheerily, contrasting my instant thunder-like mood. It wasn’t his fault, but I still found a way to blame him for dragging us apart. “Are you coming out with us tonight?” He asked despite my tracksuit pants and Gerard’s North Face hoodie I was wearing suggesting that I most definitely wasn’t.  
“He can’t,” Gerard sighed, trying his best to sound like he was mocking me, but failing. “Dick head had to be induced didn’t he because he was four days over-due.”  
“Hey!” I protested even though I was even mad at my in utero self for staying put for that extra 4 days and not being born on the same day as Gerard, like I was supposed to have been.  
“Sucks man,” Ross pressed a smile at me with genuine sympathy.  
“I know right! Anyway, I’m fucking off before Joe gets here,” I said quickly. “Ross, I’ll send you over the practice timetable for next year's soccer.”  
“Thanks!” He grinned back at me.  
“And, G?”  
“Yeah, bab- erh- Frank?” He mumbled, catching his endearment near-slip up before it could escape his lips.  
“Be careful, yeah?” I begged him.  
“I will, I fuckin’ promise.”

And with that, I reluctantly left him to have the night he had dreamt of for years whilst I went home alone and sulked trying to follow his wishes of not over-thinking what he was up to.


	51. I'd probably still adore you with your hands around my neck

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> DISCLAIMER- 
> 
> It was brought to my attention that in some cultures bug is used as a homophobic slur but that wasn't my intention at all. Here it's just like an affectionate term (well, that's the way it's intended in the story) So I just wanted to clear it up I'm not using to to offend anyone and I'm sorry if it did!!!! 
> 
> Anyway have some fluff

**G POV-**

The respect I had for my mother went right down the fucking drain as my inhibitions took control of my actions, like somebody becoming possessed by something dark and uncaring. She had trusted me with the house, dragging Mikey and my father out for a meal so they would not supposedly embarrass me whilst my friends were over. Oh God, just the thought of her knowing the truth of why I did not want her in the house made my skin crawl with betrayal, but I knew it was the easiest way to avoid anybody getting hurt. I had asked Joe and Dean not to bring any narcotics into my house, the threat of being kicked out being hot and truthful on her ruby red lips, but I know that my resistance was futile. With that though, when Joe had produced the bag of white powder that had been my only friend in a few of my darkest hours, I had tried to deny it for at least a little while. I wasn’t cocaines best friend though, that was alcohol, and with the drink, came the craving for something more. So when Joe had poured out a thick line of the substance on my mother’s breakfast bar I had shared a coffee with my grandparents on just that afternoon, the fuzziness of my head suggested it to be a good idea to bend over and snort it like the fucking useless addict that I was. For once though, I was not doing cocaine to feel a disconnect, I was using it to emphasise the high I already had. For the first time in years, I did not feel quite so numb as I always had done. My stoney, cold heart was seemingly beating for the first time in my sad life, and I was greedy for it. No wonder happiness was so addicting, the warm hum of it left my skin tingly, something that words could not even describe. I had meant what I had told him earlier, no substance could make me feel quite the way he could, but he couldn’t be fucking here by my side, so I had to fill the void somehow. I dreaded to think what would happen when he inevitably got bored with the game we were playing together, after all, this couldn’t be anything more than fun. I tried to force that thought, and the agonising pain of missing him being by my side to the back of my brain and tried to enjoy the time I had with my friends, that time that had been pretty scarce in the past week. When my friends had gotten girlfriends in the past, I never fucking understood why they wanted to ditch our group time together to be with a girl. I figured that’s because I had never felt that way in any of my previous relationships, but now I got it. I had been awaiting my eighteenth for years now, but suddenly being out in those clubs I had been so desperate to get into didn’t seem worth it if it was without him. Saying that, I didn’t care what Frank’s opinion on my friends was, I did still owe them everything I had and I did really fucking like them. Despite the dramas and the petty arguments, they had been there when no one else had to distract me from the horrible, dark nights I had was failing to fight on my own in my younger years. With that thought hot in my head, I snatched the bag from Joe’s hands and prepared more lines for the people who had saved my life in more ways than one.

“You seem happy, G,” Ross came from behind me, throwing his arm around my shoulders as I was taking a minute to appreciate the peace in my life for once. My friends were jumping around wildly singing a Childish Gambino song I knew Frank would have fucking hated, which the thought of him plugging his ears with his cheesy, indie music made me smile. 

“I really fucking am, Rossy,” I beamed at him, that grin on my face not being painted nor caused by narcotics for once.

“You’ve got the fucking feels, man!”

“Nah,” I tried to deny, but could not fight the tell-tale smirk fighting its way onto my face.

“You spoke to that girl then?”

“Yeah,” I nodded to him, not quite ready to admit to anybody that wasn’t in Frank’s cringe-filled friendship group that that ‘ _girl_ ’ wasn’t quite so female. I didn’t know why I trusted Frank’s friends. I wanted to believe it was the sincere caring hint in Kenny’s eyes when he saw the way I grabbed his friend’s hand, but maybe I also liked making James jealous. That was not why I was affectionate to him, but if it was a bonus, I was going to take it. I was so euphoric, I wasn’t even angry at James for the first time since I’d learnt of the guy's existence. I mean, you’d have to be fucking immortal or something not to fall in love with Frank and his oversized hazel eyes, so for once, I didn’t hate his fucking guts.

“I’m fucking buzzing for you, G, I really am,” Ross beamed jumping all over me and ruffling the hair Frank had spent so long combing down in all the right places, but I was too intoxicated to care.

“What are you gay boys jumping about for?” Joe frowned coming over, never enjoying being the one to be left out of the loops of gossip.

“My boys in love!” Ross grinned, the naivety of his mistake making it difficult to be furious with him for disclosing something so personal to the one I wanted to hide it from the most.

“With who?” Joe scowled as I tried to shake my head furiously at Ross to shut his fucking mouth. I saw the look of horror take over Ross’ face as he realised what he had done, and that was without even knowing the full weight of his statement. All Ross would know is that Joe would most definitely not want me to be in love because he would lose his wingman, so would try his hardest to break me and this girl who did not exist up. No to me, this meant Joe was going to relentlessly dig until he uncovered the truth. That was not going to happen though, he would never fucking know the truth to protect the both of us.

“With life, obviously,” I tried to nervously giggle off as Joe’s eyes narrowed into a sharp squint as he tried to uncover any weakness in my wall of lies that he could force his way through like a steam roller and discover the truth. 

“That’s bent, Gerard,” he scowled, not truly believing my statement but not yet pushing it. I knew the fact that he had left it for now only meant more agro later on, but it seemed worth it at the time, plus my intoxication was taking over. It had been a hot minute since I had indulged in anything self-destructive, and fuck, I had forgotten just how thrilling it could be. As the chemical structure of the cocaine snaked its way it to my brain and into my bloodstream, my resistance became lower.

\----

“Taxi is outside!” Tom said getting to his feet quickly, “somebody sober this moron up, or we ain’t getting in nowhere!” He muttered pointing harshly at me. I blinked harshly three times trying to focus on his sharp finger, but it still coming across as a blurry mess. He had stayed pretty much sober because of Shannon’s threat of leaving him if he ever fucked up again. He didn’t trust himself with the nameless girls in town who would throw themselves at him as soon as they knew who he was related to, and I was surprised Shannon was letting him out at all. I should have followed his lead, but I needed to prove to myself that I was strong enough to resist them. I never wanted to see hurt in his eyes like I had when he had found out about Amber, and not even alcohol and drugs could make me forget that. 

My friends hauled me to the awaiting cab outside of my house, forgetting to lock the front door but us all being too fucked up to care. My friends were shoving water down my throat as the walls of the car began to spin around me, and I tossed my head and giggled at the dance music filling the air. 

“Gerard, are you okay, mate?” Ross frowned at me wiping a droplet of water that escaped from my lip.

“I’m fuckin’ fine!” I slurred, clearly being far from okay but not wanting to give in and miss out on the night that my friends had meticulously planned. The other’s weren’t quite so as caring as Ross was, as my attention suddenly snapped to the bright light coming from the back of Jesse’s phone as the laughed at the way I failed to snatch the device from his hands. 

“Don't fuckin’ film me,” I tried to speak in a sober manner, but failed miserably. I was paranoid at the way I knew my eyes would shine in a way that was clearly not caused by the flash of a camera and who was going to be sat at home watching said video feeling paranoid about all the things I was not actually doing. Frank liked to create problems in his own head, but didn’t we all? I felt guilty that he never used to be that way before me. I had just made him just as anxious as I was, and for that I was evil. I was evil because I should have let him escape me, but I guessed I was just too fucking selfish to do that. 

If one is riddled with anxiety, then they probably shouldn’t partake in copious amounts of drug-taking and alcohol binging, but at the time it seemed wise. That was until we made it into the busy night, the streets plagued with people celebrating their Christmas office parties and the holiday season, not meaning to scare me but just leaving me feeling claustrophobic with their shoving and shouting.

“It’s okay, G, when we get into this bar I’ll get you a water, pal,” Ross tried to squeeze my arm, seeing the looming freak out on my face. I didn’t want my stupid fucking mental health to ruin this for once, I was eighteen and I was finally fucking free from the restraints of my childhood. Eighteen was just a number though, and just because I was officially an adult did not mean the ghosts of my past were just going to fuck off like I wished they would. My thoughts were like a fucking beehive, buzzing around and working away to produce honey that was just going to be ripped away from me anyway. The only thing that stilled the way they pestered me was the vibration in my hand from my phone that I did not realise I had been clutching so tightly.

**\- Have a good time but be fuckin careful you moron love ya xo**

And suddenly, I did not feel quite so scared.

 

\----

 

With Frank’s message, came the return of my good time. I did want to be with him, but I understood the constraints of the law because I had abided to it for so fucking long, and I wasn’t prepared to think of an excuse to Joe now which meant I could leave early. Besides, even if Frank was of age, I doubted he would have come to the shitty club my friends dragged me to because he wasn’t particularly a fan of Drake. 

“I can’t believe you lived this long, Gezza,” Joe threw his arm around me as we hung out at the bar awaiting more of the alcohol I probably shouldn’t be drinking.

“I’m so fucking happy, Delo,” I hummed into his shoulder as I enjoyed the dizziness to my head. After I had acted sober enough to get into the tacky club called ‘the Lounge’, Joe’s stress levels had significantly dropped. As soon as I had handed over my now valid ID, it was like a switch had gone off in his head and he was the version of himself in which I craved. Joe could be the greatest guy on the planet, but he could also be the worst, and I did not prefer the latter.

“I’m glad, time to get off that emo self-pity bullshit and enjoy yourself!” 

“I fuckin’ love you man,” I beamed at him.

“Love ya too, gay boy,” he smirked down at me, greedily accepting the Jager bombs the barmaid had presented him with. I tried to reach over him and pay, but he simply pushed my hand away and presented his own card on that contactless machine before pushing the shot into my hand. Okay, a strong liquor mixed with a cheap energy drink chaser probably was not wise in my post-anxiety-ridden state, but if Joe had bought it, I was fucking drinking it. 

“Wanna come for a smoke, G man?” Joe asked presenting a pre-rolled cigarette in my direction, suggesting I did not have a choice in the matter. Whenever I smoked, Frank always kissed me a little differently because he did not like the taste of it on my breath, but I figured he wasn’t there to stop nor judge me so I followed Joe and his lanky legs right out to the smoking area of the club.

As the thumping bass music filtered around us, I tried to concentrate on the smoke billowing from my cigarette and not the way my heart was accelerating at a way that was most likely not healthy. I was not about to become anxious in front of Joe, especially when Ross was tucked away quietly talking to a girl in which I knew exactly was his type. Ever since he had told me about Sophie, I could not get the thought of her big brown eyes from my mind, and the way that he would never see them blink back at him again. I wanted him to find that same happiness with somebody else, even if the girls of the night would only provide him with a temporary release. 

“How you been?” Joe asked me, inhaling sharply around the smoke dangling from his lips. The question shocked me and I was unsure if that was because I had been lost in a daydream about Ross and his tragic love story again or for the mere fact that Joe rarely asked how anybody was doing.

“Erm, good, real good,” I replied honestly.

“How come? I thought happiness just wasn’t your style.”

“It’s not really,” I shrugged, never being too proud to admit that I was addicted to the sadness that had been there for so long, it was intertwined into my DNA. “I guess I just can’t help not being a miserable fuck sometimes.”

“You didn’t answer my question,” he frowned pointedly.

“What question?”

“What’s made the sunshine our your fuckin’ ass?”

“Dunno,” I said quickly, “being finally allowed to have a fucking drink whenever I want kinda helps.”

“That’s my boy,” he laughed carelessly.

“Anyway, enough about me,” I changed the course of the conversation to something I knew he would not be able to resist; himself. “How are you?”

“I’m doing well, G,” he grinned.

“Why? I know you’re not depressing or anything but I didn’t exactly being a cheery fucker was your style either.”

“It’s not, but I think Alex is going to take me back.”

“Alex?” I spat out in utter disbelief. Alex was the love of Joe’s life, I truly believed he had not gotten over losing her for a quick fuck at a party despite never admitting how much she had hurt him. She was everything Joe needed in his life, beautiful and willing to put him in his place. They had broken up for the last time way over a year ago now, but I saw the way he looked for her in every girl he screwed. Joe loved Alex, but he always loved the danger of being unfaithful just a little bit more. Still, when she screamed in his face that she never wanted to see him again after the last time, I had really thought she had meant it.

“Yeah, she was at that party you missed the other night, and you know no one could make her laugh quite like I could, G,” he stated back proudly, like an alpha lion. 

“Aw, I’m buzzing for you, Delo,” I said sincerely.

“Me too,” he nodded, sucking in sharply. I wanted nothing more than to be honest with him like he had just been with me, but it was never going to end well. Frank had to stay my little secret, otherwise, I feared for his actual safety. Of course Joe was homophobic, he was a stereotypical high school ass hole, but I think the thought of Frank taking me away from him just that one bit more than he could ever fight back with would have sent him over the edge. No, I had to live two separate lives like the Mancunian version of Hannah fucking Montana. 

“Ah shit, G, you’re gonna need this,” Joe said quickly shoving two extra shots down my throat.

“What?” I said hoarsely as the escaped sharp liquid dribbled from my lips, trying to recover from the burn in my throat that it had unexpectedly caused. I was going to give drinking a rest until I'd sobered up a little, but I guessed Joe had other plans.

“Don’t kill me!”

“What, Delo?”

“So, you know I told you I was fucking Hannah-“

“But what about Alex?”

“That’s not the point, Gerard,” he said quickly. “Anyway, it kinda slipped we were coming here tonight, and your psycho girlfriend may or may not be here.”

“Joe!” I yelled at him. “Why the fuck did you do that?” I slurred as the extra drink started to snatch control of my actions more and more. I had made a point to avoid Amber, simply saying I needed space because I didn’t have an answer for her. Breaking up with a girl I had successfully invested a lot of my time into was fucking terrifying, and Joe’s questions on why I was throwing it all away without another girl to replace her only made that truth more daunting yet sacred. 

“She asked what we were doing for your birthday, I didn’t fucking know she was gonna tell Amber, did I?”

“Well, why would she fucking not? They’re best friends!”

“Just man up, Gerard,” he shook his head at me. “Be the boy I taught you to fucking be!” He chucked my chin as if he was spurring me on in a fucking football game, not breaking an undeserving girls heart. 

“What do I say?”

“G, she’s fucking gagging for you, man, and she’s fitter than the grim girls in the club so I say fuck her tonight, break her heart tomorrow.”

“But Joe, I don’t-“

“Amber!” He yelled over to my unsuspecting girlfriend. “He’s over here, babe!”

Her face was stone cold, her scowl deep-set into her pretty face as she marched over in her 6-inch red stilettos with a few choice words threatening to spill off her perfectly made-up lips. I felt bad for not feeling guilty, but her being here only left me feeling like I was being cornered again. The anxiety in my chest started to rise up my throat like bile as I panicked and reached for Joe’s half-finished vodka and lemonade, and poured it down my throat.

“Hey!” He snapped at me.

“You fucking owe me more than a drink,” I growled at him as my impending doom got closer. 

“Fair enough,” he smirked, “I’ll be in the club if you need me to break her heart for you. I still think you should hit it one last time though,” he shrugged before disappearing into the night and leaving me stranded on my own with a girl who clearly hated my guts.

“Hi,” I slurred weakly as the toxins from the vodka snaked their way into my bloodstream. I wasn’t sure if I felt nauseous from the amount of drink I had consumed, or from the fact it appeared my two worlds could not coexist happily like I had wanted them to. 

“Don’t fucking hi me Gerard!” She screamed in my face loud enough for everyone in a close proximity to turn their heads and gawk at the unfolding drama in front of them. A girl being angry with me wasn’t exactly a new experience, but this time it was different, this time I had something to lose. 

“We need to talk,” I mumbled suddenly wishing I wasn’t quite so drunk so I could think of anything worthwhile to say to her.

“You fucking bet we do, who the fuck are you screwing behind my back?”

“No one, babe, I-“ I stopped myself, merely calling her babe out of habit but becoming hooked by the hope I saw it caused in her eye. If I called her babe, to her that meant I was wanting to be affectionate, but to me, it was to stop Frank’s name from tumbling from my drunken mouth. 

“Gerard,” her lip just trembled pathetically as I stood before her with a guilty look on my face like a misbehaving school child being scorned. I had no answer for my actions, I knew they were wrong, but I loved him. 

“I didn’t mean to hurt you,” I uttered.

“But you did, Gerard,” she snapped back at me causing my head to fizz with the way events were mirroring that night when Frank and told me he just wanted to be my friend. I was drunker than I had first thought, and each emotional rich response I had in my head would not take control of my tongue and spurt out as I begged them to. “Why did you hurt me?”

“I need to because, if I don’t hurt you, he won’t want me!” I blurted out, not really being in control of my actions like a fucking puppet. The weight of my words sat heavy in the air for her but I had not quite comprehended them myself.

“ _He_?” She screamed at me. “I fucking knew _he_ had something to do with this!”

“Babe,” I slurred, the sober version of myself screaming inside of my brain to shut the fuck up, but my evening persona winning just like it always did.

“Gerard, you’re a fucking adult now, and you’re still letting other people decide what you want! If you want me, just fucking have me! We can forget this and-“

“I don’t want you, I want him,” I stumbled backwards hitting the knee-height wall behind and being involuntarily brought to sit on it by my uncoordinated legs. 

“Wait till I fucking find him,” she fumed disappearing into the night without giving me the chance to even question her next moves or what she thought I had meant by my seemingly barbaric statement. 

“Gerard?” I heard a voice come from above me not long after Amber had left me sitting there. My head was in my hands and I tried to will myself not to vomit, the intoxication in my head making that increasingly difficult.

“Rosssssy,” I slurred, slumping onto his chest as he sat beside me.

“How much have you drank, bro?”

“Too fuckin’ much!” I wanted to ask him where the girl he was talking to before was, but I couldn’t find the ability to form the question, instead, all I could do was roll my head back again. 

“Well, I wanna get you out of here. I heard from Amber’s friends that she’s looking for Delo and I think you’re too drunk to handle it right now, is that okay?”

I probably took a little too long to answer, my name repeatedly coming from his lips as he tried to rouse me into a state of consciousness, but it didn’t matter anyway. I was too inebriated to function, but there was no denying the booming voice of Joe coming from in front of me and the shrill yells of Amber closely followed behind as they marched to where I was sat.

“Look what you’ve fucking done to him, Delo!” Amber snapped at him.

“He did that to himself! It’s not my fault he can’t handle his liquor now, is it?”

“He’s only like that when he’s around you and those other fucking dick heads! It’s all your fault!”

“What’s my fault?” Joe snapped right back at her sharply.

“He said to me if he loved me then _YOU_ wouldn’t want him!”

“Oh babe, do you really think I give a fuck if he has a girlfriend or not? He’ll cheat on whoever I tell him to cheat on with you with, it doesn’t fucking matter if you’re in the picture or not!”

“Don’t kid yourself, you piece of shit!”

“I didn’t say that, Delo,” I slurred, clearly not knowing when to shut the fuck up.

“You fucking did, Gerard! You said _HE_ wouldn’t want you anymore!”

“Hey, guys, leave him out of this, I need to take him home!” Ross said trying to drag me from the wall that I was sat upon. 

“Shut the fuck up, Ross,” Joe yelled back at him, knocking him back to sit on the wall next to me, who by that point was struggling to keep my head up at all. 

“Who wouldn’t want you anymore, Gerard?” Joe got down to my level and yelled in my face, his cheap vodka scented breath making me cringe.

“No one,” I mumbled.

“Do not fucking tell me you and that little fucking virgin have been getting laid without even telling me! I’m very fucking generous letting you being friends with that little soccer freak at all, so if you two have been out wing manning each other without even consulting me first then you’re in fucking trouble! Gerard, don’t fucking ignore me!” He screeched at me, holding up my head by my hair with force.

“He’s not a virgin,” was all I could spit back at him, before sloppily trying to push him away from me.

“What the fuck?” Joe said, “Don’t fucking undermine me, you little cunt!”

“Hey!” Ross said quickly, yanking my arm to drag me away with such force that it felt like he could have ripped it out of its socket. “I’m taking him home, Delo, he’s fucked.”

“He’ll be more fucked if he continues to backchat me like that!”

“He doesn’t mean it! He can’t even walk, man!”

“Can,” I tried to protest but failed to prove my point with the way my feet became tangled with each other.

“See! You guys can sort this out tomorrow, but I’m taking him home.”

“Oh look at you, finally growing a backbone after all this fucking time, Ross!”

“Hey, don’t start on me, this town is riddled with police right now, and if you start a fight with him then you’re fucked, aren’t you? So don’t go off at me for trying to protect the both of you!”

“Fine, take your fucking boyfriend home, I’m going to get laid,” Joe said fiercely getting a little too close to Ross’ face to be considered anything but confrontational. 

“Alex though,” I slurred.

“Mind your fucking business, Gerard,” he simply said back. “Get some fucking sleep, because I want the normal G back ASAP or I won’t be fucking happy.”

“He will, Joe,” Ross replied for me quickly dragging me away from where Amber and Joe were still going at each other ferociously with sharp words.

\----

 

“Fuck me, Gerard, you nearly got us both in shit there,” Ross facetiously chuckled as he hauled me down the old cobbled streets of my home town, trying to avoid to intruding drunken eyes staring at how fucked up I was. If it was not for Ross, I doubted I could have had the inhibitions to get myself home, for a start he was carrying the majority of my weight as I simply dragged my feet to the waiting taxis. 

“Sorry Ross,” I muttered guiltily.

“Don’t sweat it, we all get this drunk at least once in town. I just wished someone had looked after me when it had happened to me!”

“Could have called me! Would have picked you up!”

“You were off with some girl,” he shook his head, “It’s okay though, I know it must have been shitty to be the only one who wasn’t eighteen.”

“Sorry, Ross,” I said again, like my apology could ever make up for the times I was a shit friend to him. 

“Shut up, G! I don’t like it when you’re nice to me!” He chucked again. “Anyway, let’s get you home.”

“Don’t wanna go home,” I said quickly knowing there was only one way to stop the emptiness in my chest from reaching my head and causing dark thoughts.

“Sorry to burst your bubble, G, but no other club is gonna let you anywhere near the door when you’re like this.”

“Wanna see my Frankieeee,” I hiccuped.

“Frank?” He frowned, “you wanna go to Frank’s house?”

“Yup!”

“Gerard, it’s like 2 AM I don’t think-“

“He’ll be up,” I said knowing full well he would be sat there, wide awake, worrying about me. He had made me pinky promise to text him when I was home safe because he was worried about the dangers of the night, he didn’t see though, I was the danger. No dark shadow or eery alleyway had anything on me and my fucked up ways. 

“Okay, but I’m coming with you to make sure you can actually get in his house.”

“Got a key,” I slurred, pulling it out my pocket in attempts to show him, but letting the small bit of metal slip through my fingers and clatter to the floor.

“Yeah, and you’ve just proved my point. Now come on, I’ll get us a cab.”

It was probably bad how excited I was to go and finally tumble into bed with the root of all of my problems, even though he did not deserve that label. If he wasn’t so fucking loveable, I would have done what was expected of me and gone back with Amber to have meaningless sex, not crawl next to the love of my life that I was never allowed to have. Still, I was excited to see him, despite the cruel reality to everything, even though with my slumped head and nearly sleeping form, I most likely did not look like it. 

“Yeah, we’re nearly at yours now, he’s pretty fucked though,” I heard Ross say. I tried to lift my head up enough to ask him who the fuck he was even speaking to but failed miserably. Still, even in the state, I was in, it didn’t take long for the hum of a receiver to make it click in my head that he was on the phone.

“Is he mad?” I mumbled.

“No, G, nobody is mad at you, pal,” I felt him squeeze my shoulder tightly trying his best to reassure me that I hadn’t fucked everything up once again, even though I knew I had. 

 

—-

 

“Gerard, wake up, we’re here!” Ross shook me awake gently as I suddenly realised the taxi we were in wasn’t rattling with movement any longer. The liquor I had consumed along with drugs suddenly did not seem so much of a good idea as I felt if I was in the middle of a roundabout being furiously spun. My sickness immediately eased off a little though as I felt the taxi door on my side fling open and the comforting scent of him flood my nose.

“ _Frankieeee_ ,” I slurred even more than before, my words exaggerated and long like snakes falling from my lips and slithering off into the night. 

“Fuck me, I didn’t think you meant he was this bad,” I felt his warm chest rise with a giggle as he leant over me to undo my seatbelt that Ross had forced on me.

“Sorry, I shouldn’t have left him alone with Joe,” Ross said sheepishly.

“It’s his own fuckin’ fault, don’t you feel bad!” Frank reassured him as he attempted to haul me to my feet.

“Here I’ll help,” Ross said quickly jumping out of the other side of the cab. “Can you just wait five minutes?” He quickly called to the taxi driver as he pulled me to my feet and helped Frank to carry my dead weight up his path.

“You’re wearing my hoodie,” I grinned down at him and his blue plaid pyjama bottoms with my hoodie on top.

“Yep, well it is fucking freezing!” He said quickly, glancing self-consciously at Ross who was too preoccupied making sure I walked straight to notice the flirtatious tint to my voice. 

“I’d rather you not be wearing anything,” I flashed a dopey grin at him.

“Gerard, shut up man!” I could tell he was blushing despite it being too dark to visibly see, and all I could do was giggle at him. 

“You want me to help you get him to bed, man?” Ross asked once we approached Frank’s front door.

“Nah it’s cool, thanks, bro! I need to force some water and toast down his throat before he comes anywhere near my room.”

“Fair enough!” He said before they got lost in a conversation about football practice that just sounded like meaningless drivel to me.

“Frank, give me attention,” I pouted up at him, nuzzling my head on his shoulder.

“One second,” he said quickly patting me awkwardly on the back.

“ _Frankieeeee_ ,” I whined impatiently. Suddenly it clicked in my head though, I knew how to get him to stop talking about that God awful game. I turned my head upwards and quickly went to kiss his lips that were enticing me in with the way he expertly spewed about something even as boring as football. I hated that shitty sport, but the way his eyes lit up when spoke of it made something inside myself revive. 

“Gerard!” He snapped jumping back slightly so my lips landed awkwardly on the corner of his mouth.

“What?”

“Ross!”

“Ah sorry, Rossy! I didn’t mean to PDA in front of you,” I giggled.

“Erm, it’s cool, G,” Ross frowned at us.

“He’s so drunk!” Frank laughed nervously. “Come on now, G, bedtime!”

“Why is your voice so high and awkward?” I asked him.

“It’s not!”

“I better go, erm, I hope your hangover isn’t too grim tomorrow, birthday boy,” Ross awkwardly smiled before ruffling my hair and walking away.

“Love you, Rossy!” I called loudly down the path before earning a harsh shush from Frank, who I was leaning on.

“Love you too! Now get some fucking sleep!”

 

——

 

“Frankie, why won’t you talk to me?” I pouted as he busied himself at the toaster, whilst I had my head in my hands at his breakfast bar.

“Because you’re a fucking idiot! Why would you try and kiss me with Ross stood there you absolute moron?”

“Because I love ya!” I beamed at him as he brought me some heavily buttered toast, and began trying to force-feed it to me along with a tall glass of ice water.

“It’s really hard to be mad at you when you say shit like that to me,” he expression softened as he wiped some melted butter from my bottom lip with his thumb, his eyes lingering there longer than they needed to.

“You love me too, don’t you?” I smirked.

“A lil bit,” he held his fingers up with a tiny distance between them.

“A lotta bit! No one else would force-feed me toast at 2 AM.”

“You must be drunker than I thought if you think that I love you, that’s gross,” he poked his tongue out at me, sarcasm coating his voice. 

“Yeah so gross,” I smiled happily. 

\--- 

 

“Frank,” I mumbled after some time of him sitting beside me stroking stray hairs out of my eyes from my ruined style.

“Yeah, baby?” He hummed happily, twisting hair between his nimble fingers.

“Feel sick,” I groaned.

“For fuck’s sake Gerard,” he whined. “Come on then!” He laced his fingers with my own before hauling me to my feet and dragging me up the stairs to his bathroom.

 

I sat on the bathroom floor trying to vomit, but I just couldn’t. It appeared the overloaded carb snack had done the trick enough to soak up the alcohol, but that wasn’t what I wanted. I knew the fact I could not be sick tonight meant for one bitch of a hangover in the morning, but if he was looking after me, then I struggled to give a shit. He’d sat behind me the whole time, stroking my back and humming to himself to keep himself awake. I could tell from the dark circles that rung his eyes that he was fucking knackered, so I decided to haul myself to my feet and began trudging upstairs to his room.

“Wait for me, you little drunk prick!” He said quickly overtaking me and leading me to his room. Once we were safely inside, I flopped on his bed without so much of a warning.

“You can’t sleep in your shoes, Gerard!” He bitched at me as he started to untie them as I half-arsed kicked them off my feet and began to unbutton my jeans.

“Ooo hello,” I giggled to myself as he pushed them off my body.

“Sleep, Gerard, now,” he warned me in a stern voice.

“Sorry _mom_ ,” I rolled my eyes up at him but still continued to cuddle into the teddy he had since he was a baby that we had matching ones of. Our Mom’s had gotten them us when we were born, but mine became lost in abandoned boxes hidden far away from Joe’s scrutinising questions, so I naturally clung to Frank’s. Besides, it smelt of him which only made it that bit better than mine anyway.

“You know I love you because I’m letting you hug Rupert,” he half-heartedly grumbled at me, referring to that stupid fucking teddy bear.

\-----

 

Not long after myself, he crawled in bed next to me, his warm body cosying up to mine in a big spoon that I relaxed in to. He kissed me lazily for a second before we were interrupted by his big yawn, meaning it was time for him to roll over and go to sleep. I was quiet for a while, the sound of his shallow breathing causing goosebumps on my arms.

“Frank?” I mumbled into the darkness.

“Mmm, baby?” He hummed back, his voice coated in a half-sleep.

“Do you want me to sing you some Arctic Monkeys?”

“Maybe in the morning,” I felt his smirk against the bare skin of my neck.

“I’ll sing you 505, I know that’s your favourite because you know that _I’d still love you with your hands around my neck_.”

“My hands will be around your neck if you don’t shut the fuck up and let me sleep!”

“I broke up with Amber," I stated clearly. 

“What?” He shot up. 

“She came and found me tonight, and I told her it was over. She asked me to go back to hers with her, and I said no, because I love you.”

“Why are you telling me this? Do you think it puts my mind to rest knowing you probably made her think you were going to go back with her? Did you fucking kiss her or-“

“No. I broke up with her, that’s all.”

“Erm, really?”

“Yes, I’m all yours baby boy,” I giggled as he kissed my neck with his warm, wet mouth. “ _I CRUMBLE COMPLETELY WHEN YOU CRY_!” I sang loudly out of nowhere.

“Gerard!” He snapped at me, clamping a hand over my mouth putting an abrupt end to my mini Arctic Monkey’s tribute act.


	52. You must have heard it from my best friend, she's always talking when she should be listening

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> I AM SO SORRY!!! lemme just explain why I was gone so long:
> 
> I'm sure a lot of people relate to this but when I my MH is bad, anything creative I do goes to shit and I love this story so much I just didn't want to ruin it with a half arsed effort of writing for the sake of it. If I do this in future ill post an update to explain I just didn't know the words to say to explain it but yeah I went and lived a Gerard (in this story) life for a bit and now im back from being self destructive I think (yay). I'm not posting for sympathy because sometimes life just happens, I just wanted to explain myself and hope you accept my apology for disappearing for nearly 2 months.
> 
> (If u wanna get I contact with me about updates in the future tho I can give my insta/twitter! just ask)
> 
> Also, I when I was gone I got my dream job in a mental health ward so call me Markman (if you get that splitting of a mind reference I love you hahaha)
> 
> Anyway, this is the song for this chapter it's a shitty Nero one I just thought the lyrics fit well;  
> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YWK6dQOdri0
> 
>  
> 
> I hope you enjoy, and like I said i'm so so so sorry

F POV-

Gerard slept for over 12 fucking hours, only occasionally grunting that he felt shit before turning over and falling back to sleep. Although it frustrated me, I was glad it was only a hangover that he had and not the need to be fucking hospitalised. When I had received yet another call from Ross waking me up from my restless sleep from his phone, I could only fear the worse. It wasn’t like last time though, he had just been really fucking drunk instead, in an almost adorable yet annoying way. I usually hated drunk people when I was stone-cold sober, but there was just something about the way he slurred that he loved me about a million times that made me a sucker for drunk him. I had barely understood anything he had told me last night, his words becoming jumbled between drunken speeches and hiccups, but it was nice to see him being a happy-drunk for once and not either angry or sad. The fact that Gerard was sleeping so much, however, only left me with time on my own to overthink what Ross must have thought about us and our weird friendship. Gerard the fucking idiot had attempted to kiss me in front of him, and that was without even mentioning the little suggestive comments that were far too flirtatious to be considered that of a friend. I sat waiting all morning and early afternoon for the world to collapse around me but every message the pinged up on Gerard’s phone was either photos of last night or clues to where the other’s had ended up. He received a blunt text from Joe that merely read **‘call me dick head’** , but with that, I didn’t freak out too much, Joe was far too theatrical to send a simple text like that about something as big as his minion having an affair with his best friend. No, if Joe knew he would have marched here and dragged Gerard out of bed himself.

Just after 3 o’clock, Gerard finally woke up, his breath smelling strongly of last nights liquor and cigarettes. He looked rough, his cheeks flushed pink with too much sleep and nausea, but there was something about his ruffled hair and devilish eyes that still made him mesmerisingly beautiful.   
“Mornin’,” I smirked at him as he groaned and clutched his stomach with the violent acidic attack that must be going on inside him with the toxic liquor he had consumed.   
“Don’t,” he simply grunted at me, before cuddling closely into my bare chest.  
“Don’t what? All I said was morning, _jheeze_!”  
“Don’t look at me with that _I told you so_ fucking look!”  
“Well, I did say don’t mix your drinks, G!” I replied cockily, ignoring his pleas for me not to be an over arrogant wind-up when he was feeling so vulnerable.  
“Blah fuckin’ blah, now are you gonna order me some food or are you the worst best friend ever?”  
“You want food?” I frowned, trailing my fingers softly over his warm back. It was never like Gerard to request food, even when he was hungover and needed the grease of a shitty take away to recover.  
“Mmm,” he hummed happily kissing lightly on my collarbone.  
“Fine,” I appeared sharp, but I wasn’t, I was secretly thrilled he seemed to be eating and therefore in a positive mindset.

Gerard ate everything I ordered, slowly being dragged out his hangover and becoming chirpier by the minute.  
“Thank you,” he grinned at me once he had finished.  
“That’s okay,” I smiled back, not even remotely fighting him away when he leant forward and pressed his lips to mine to show his gratitude. I was pretty sure it was just meant to be a small thank you kiss, but he lingered there a little too long and our pressed lips soon became an open-mouthed kiss.  
“You taste fuckin’ disgusting,” I grumbled against his mouth, his vodka and tobacco scented breath still present even after he’d brushed his teeth and eaten.   
“You don’t _have_ to kiss me,” he rolled his eyes, pulling ever so slightly away from me.  
“Oh, I didn’t say that now did I!” I pulled him back towards me by his shirt collar.

——

“G, you can’t keep ignoring it!” I groaned as his phone rang again with Joe’s name flashing upon the screen. Of course, I was not usually the biggest advocate for Gerard being at Joe’s beck and call, but I didn’t want him sniffing around and finding out he was actually with me. Gerard just looked at me like I was crazy, gripping his buzzing phone with paranoia as he let it ring out again. He couldn’t remember what had exactly happened the night before, but he figured from the 17 missed calls, it couldn’t have been good.  
“I just remember him pushing me!” Gerard whined, “It’s not even worth the agro!”  
“Just fucking man up!” I fumed in frustration because to me, Joe was not someone to be feared.   
“Fine,” he snapped at me but made no effort to answer the next incoming call from his fucking puppet master. Out of irritation, I snatched it and pressed the green call button, earning a stern scowl from Gerard. I didn’t think it was meant for me, he was just anxious and he was taking it out on me, but I knew it would only be made worse the more he ignored him.   
“Gerard?” I heard Joe bark down the receiver, as he just sat there stunned with his mouth hanging open like a fucking fish. “Hello?”  
“Erh, Delo!” He said quickly, shooting to his feet off the bed and walking far enough away so I could not hear what Joe was saying. From the way I could tell he was repeatedly cutting Gerard off, and the sharp fuzz that was still audible to me, I could tell it could not have been a pleasant conversation.  
“Yeah, I know that-“ Gerard tried to plea, before getting cut off again. “I’m sorry Joe, I-“ he tried but failed to speak, before letting his friend just get his coercive behaviour take control once again. As much as I wanted to go over there and slam the phone down for him, the worried look on his face making it harder to resist, I knew that wasn’t what he needed. We only had a few months left of school, and then Gerard would be far away from the toxic life he was caught in here, so I just had to be patient. Me telling Gerard to cut his awful friendship group off would never work on its own, he needed to come to his own realisation about them, or he would blame me for the consequences of losing them, and I didn’t think I could handle that.   
“Erh right now?” Gerard said weakly, “I’m just chilling. No! I’m hungover as fuck I-“  
He sighed in defeat as I assumed Joe went off on another tangent. I tried to make him laugh by pulling faces at him, but all I got back was a strained smile as exhaustion took over his already fed up face.  
“Frank’s here so I don’t think- wait really? Are you sure?”  
“What?” I mouthed, the mention of my name snatching my attention. He simply held a finger up at me, gesturing for me to wait.  
“Okay, erm, if you’re sure- right yeah okay see you in 15.” He sighed before hanging up the phone.  
“Look, bug, don’t kill me but-“ He began.  
“What?” I asked aloud this time.  
“So, they’re all at Shannon’s flat and they want me to come.”  
“You’re leaving me?” I couldn’t help but blurt out selfishly. I mean, he had ditched his friends a lot of me recently, but I was just greedy for his attention.  
“Not exactly.”  
“What then?”  
“You’re coming,” he shrugged as if he had not essentially just stabbed me right between my shoulder blades.  
“Ha, fuckin good one,” I rolled my eyes.  
“I’m not joking,” he blinked back at me. “You made me answer my phone!”  
“Yeah, and I meant to tell him you were with your fucking aunt or something, not me!” Gerard was, for the most part, an intelligent person, but sometimes he could be so fucking stupid it was painful.  
“I hang out with your friends all the time!” He fumed, despite the inaccuracy.   
“I am not going to Shannon’s house! Why does Joe even want me there?”  
“I dunno, he just told me to bring you along! Please, Frank!”  
“No, I have much better things to do with my time than sit there in a fucking crack den with your shit friends!” I folded my arms in a huff.  
“It won’t be like that! Shannon’s going to be there so we can’t even smoke!”  
“But-“  
“Please,” he edged forward, his eyes wide like that of a pleading child, forever winning the tug of war we had with each other for my heart. “I love you so much, just think how good this will be if you can come out with us all the time! Then we never have to be dragged apart, if you just act fucking normal for once,” he smirked crookedly in my direction.  
“Gerard! This isn’t a joke!” I attempted to scowl at him but failed miserably with the way he melodramatically pouted at me. “I am not going to Shannon’s house!”

——

“I’m here,” Gerard said into the buzzer as I heard the machine hum as the door to Shannon’s apartment block clicked open with consent. After pleading with me and promising me a million lifts to football after the new year, I had agreed to come for an hour at most. My plan was to say that we were going to Gerard’s aunt's for dinner, but I just hoped he didn’t get too sucked into the gathering meaning that he would change his mind. I could tell he was anxious from the way he nervously chewed on his lip as we began to climb the decrepit, piss-scented stairs to Shannon’s matchbox apartment. I knew it was the only place they could all get away from their parents, but to me, the place let off such a negative energy that I would much have preferred to have an intrusive conversation with my mother, but maybe that was just my newfound social anxiety talking.

“Just be cool,” Gerard said to me before we approached the almost rotten oak door to the apartment. His request contradicted to his own nervous demeanour, his terrified thoughts being exposed by the fear in his eyes. Gerard had never been interested in drama lessons, but fuck he deserved an Oscar with the way he blinked slowly before opening the door, suddenly becoming somebody else, somebody that Joe would have approved of.  
“Alright fuckers?” He smirked walking into the very contrasting zen looking apartment. The approach to Shannon’s home had made me nervous, the only thing missing from the dingy stairwell being a half-dead crack head with a needle sticking out of their arm, but walking through the door creating something within me. The feeling was not calmness, no it was far from that, but it was just something about her vibe that screamed integrity to me. There in the middle of the tiny living room floor sat Gerard’s zombie-looking friends, giggling together at tales of the night before, contrasting strongly against the tapestry and crystals that surrounded them. I breathed in the strong sense of incense surrounding me attempting to calm my nerves, but the bright blue eyes burning into me from the floor overthrew any mediating scent. I had been so nervous about coming here in the first place, I had thrown Ross and his telling eyes to the very back of mind, failing to even yell at Gerard about his stupidity now that he was sober. I had been praying that he had not seen, but the way he over analysed the both of us silently, pretending to sip on cheap cider as he did so, suggested differently to me. I looked at him in a sort of panicked desperation, the act of denying everything already and loaded to tumble from my lips before he let his spaced-out knowledge of me and Gerard form a conclusion in his head, but instead he just smiled at me and went back to fiddling on his phone.

I had been stood awkwardly in the doorway analysing Ross to the point I probably looked weird that I had not even realised Gerard had walked off with Joe, already pouring an over strong-looking vodka mix. Although of course, the scent was invisible, I almost saw the way it trailed from the glass to Gerard’s nose, making his face turn with the obvious churn of his stomach. Good. I thought to myself, he deserved to suffer for putting me in that bullshit situation.

“Does _he_ want a drink?” Joe asked rudely, more so asking Gerard but gesturing his head over to me.  
“Frank?” Gerard asked, suddenly remembering my existence.  
“Nah, you’re alright,” I turned my nose up at the both of them in a muted disgust as I made my way over to the worn, brown leather sofa, being both literally and metaphorically on a different level to everybody else in the room.

I sat by myself, glaring at the way Gerard began yelling in a cocky manner, being unsure whether it was part of his act or today’s vodka overriding his thoughts. I was concerned with how quiet Ross was staying, but he looked tired so maybe he just had been too drunk to remember any of Gerard’s mistakes from the night before. Gerard had told me that he and Joe had got in some sort of argument, and despite my wishes for it to be the end of their abdominal friendship, all seemed to be forgotten with the way they were performing some tragic dance move to Tom’s brother's apparent new song. Tom himself seemed to not be enjoying the moment either, but I didn’t know whether that was because he was being overzealous about his girlfriends apartment as apparently, she was trying to sleep in the other room or the fact the overproduced grime mess playing from Joe’s speaker reminded him of the contrast of his brothers success to his own pathetic life. The place reeked of forced smiles, whether they were caused by acting skills or narcotics, but I didn’t believe anyone was genuinely having a good time. Saying that though, the way Gerard and Joe were giggling to each other as if there wasn’t some secret resentment between the two of them, I didn’t think anyone else would be able to tell the falseness in the air.

“Hey, Frank!” Joe slurred from the floor where he and Gerard had been imitating some old W.W.E move. Although I was a little pissed off that I had wasted my time to come here to sit in solitude, I much preferred it to the way my name spilt cruelly from Joe’s thin lips. I tried to ignore him, pretending to be too engrossed in my phone to notice the way he snapped my name tartly, but it was to no avail. He came over and snatched my device from my unsuspecting fingers, causing me to look up slowly to my impending demise. I felt Gerard’s sharp intake of breath despite him being all the way across the room, the atmosphere falling deadly silent despite the crappy dance song in the background. Have you ever driven past an accident on the road and knew you were going to see something horrible that you did not want to, yet you could not look away? That’s what everyone in the room suddenly felt like as we all know Joe leaving me alone for the 45 minutes I had been there was all too good to be true.  
“Hey! I’m talking to you, Frankie boy!”  
“What?” I responded harshly, my voice coming out less strong and confident than I had intended it to.  
“G says you’re not a virgin anymore!”  
“What?” I replied in horror, the blood pumping slowly beneath my itchy skin suddenly running cold as if it had gone through the fucking osmosis process with liquid nitrogen, like that was even possible at all.   
“You heard me! Gerard told me you finally used that dick of yours! I gotta say, I didn’t think you had it in you, I thought you were just going to be a sad little virgin forever.”  
“I never said that!” Gerard spat defensively from the other side of the room, his nervousness peaking through the mask he was wearing for the first time since we had got to Shannon’s, suddenly mistrusting his drunk self and not even remembering why.  
“Yeah, you did! You told me last night!” Joe glared accusingly at him as if my sexual activity was some fucking case and he was the defendant's lawyer. In a cruel twist of fate, I felt as if the lyrics to the God awful song playing described my life in some sort of musical pathetic fallacy, the silence of the room only highlighting them more to the over-inquisitive ears.  
“ _You must have heard it from my best friend, she’s always talking when she should be listening. Can’t keep a secret to save her life, but still, I trusted with all I have inside.”_

“So?” Joe broke the awkward silence that cloaked the room, “is it true?”  
“ _Ha_!” Gerard spluttered, his voice coming out harsh and rude, “as if you fucking believed that frigid cunt would ever touch a girl!”  
“What?” Joe frowned.  
“Do you really think he’d put down that fucking soccer ball down long enough to get a girl into bed with him?” Gerard laughed harshly at my expense, which only made me feel worse when the whole room erupted with laughter.  
“You got me, G!” Joe smirked, tossing my phone down harshly back into my lap obviously becoming bored with the lack of gossip I was providing. I tried to meet Gerard’s eyes in a desperate attempt to non verbally ask him who the fuck he thought he was treating me like that, but it appeared he was too busy laughing about my apparent lack of experience. If I didn’t also have a lot to lose from exposing us, I would have fucking loved to explicitly tell Joe about the way he’d had my dick in his mouth only the day before to wipe that stupid, smug smirk right off his face. Instead, I swallowed my pride and got up to go and find the bathroom just to be far away from him. Sometimes I truly hated him so much that I wondered how I even loved him at all.

I stumbled down the tiny dark corridor before coming to the kitchen where the bathroom was apparently attached to. I was about to reach out for the chipped white door to splash cool water on my face to calm my burning cheeks, but something else caught my eye. There on the kitchen counter lay a large pink stone that shone brightly in the dimly candlelit hue of the room. I couldn’t say why it attracted me, it was just a pretty fuckin' rock, but still I picked it up, the weight of it taking me by surprise.

“Can I help you?” A voice I did not automatically recognise came from behind me, startling me to the point I nearly dropped the fucker. I spun around quickly to see a tired-looking Shannon stood at the kitchen doorway, her dreaded hair thrown up in a loose bun, looking effortlessly cool despite her nightwear.   
“I erh, s-sorry,” I stuttered nervously, her raised eyebrow making me even more uncomfortable.  
“You like it?” She asked coming towards me, completely disregarding my apology to run her small fingers over the rock I was still holding far away from me like it was an undetonated bomb.  
“Y-yeah it’s nice,” I mumbled, hurrying to throw it in her hands as if it was burning me. It was an ornament for fuck's sake!  
“It’s a rose quartz,” she stated proudly, rubbing her hands over the stone delicately.  
“Huh? Is it not just an ornament?” I frowned naively at her.  
“Oh honey,” she scoffed at me, “it’s Frank, isn’t it?”   
“Yeah.”  
“We met on Halloween!” She stated as if I could ever forget her interesting, yet captivating look.  
“Oh yeah, I remember,” I tried to pass off cooly despite my hammering heart. I had no idea why she made me nervous, but I felt as if she already knew too much, despite not really knowing me at all.   
“Rose quartz,” she began to speak again after examining her stone that was apparently not an ornament for a second. “You know it’s said to have healing powers, right? It’s meant to soothe anger and heal commitments by making one reflect on new budding relationships.”  
“Right,” I nodded, grunting a laugh at the bullshit.  
“What?” She frowned up at me, protectively clutching her apparent magic stone.  
“As much as I wanna believe that a stone could fix all my problems, I, unfortunately, live in the real world,” I grumbled. I was a little shocked when it appeared Shannon seemed genuinely offended by my comment as I thought we had both been joking about the wishful hope for fucking healing stones and over eccentric spells.   
“Oh, Frank,” she tutted at me, “I thought you were different to the silly boys in my living room, maybe I was wrong.” With her harsh words, she dusted off the rose quartz one last time before placing it back on the kitchen counter from where I had disrupted its apparent healing powers. She seemed genuinely pissed at my apparent naive comment, and for some reason, that thought bothered me more than it should. Perhaps it was because we were both in the same boat, in love with someone who was under Joe’s thumb like a fucking tack.   
“I’m sorry, I just don’t really know much about it, yano?” I said quickly.  
“Well, you might think it’s stupid but all of this shit calms me down so I believe it!”  
“I don’t think it’s stupid! I just don’t really get it!” I replied defensively.  
“Spirituality?” She raised a perfectly arched eyebrow at me. “It saved me.”  
“Oh,” I mumbled awkwardly. “Like psychic shit?” I tried to relate with the very little pragmatical knowledge I had on the matter. When I was a little younger, my mom had dragged me to this psychic supper with hopes of receiving a message from her recently deceased grandmother. At the time I had thought it was bullshit, just lonely people clinging on to something because they didn’t want to accept the reality of death. However, my mother was lost after the death of who she was closest to in her childhood so I sucked it up and went with her. I never knew my great grandmother too well, she lived in a different country after all, but I could not deny the way a chill ran right down my spine when this crazy looking medium looked right into my soul and uttered the words apparently being spoken by this spirt which were “ _bigger things are coming to you, my child, she knows it._ ” I shook it off at the time, trying to ignore the way my mother came out of the spiritualist church glowing with what I assumed to be was a made-up farce by a money-grabbing con woman, but maybe it was all deeper than I thought.  
“Yeah, you could say that,” Shannon laughed, her face softening as she realised there was no malice in my naivety. “Come on, let me show you, unless you wanna go back to your little friends?”  
“They’re not my friends,” I laughed bitterly, following her almost hypnotically to her kitchen table where she began to gather an array of pretty looking stones and herbs.

——

“So the death card isn’t even that much of a bad thing?” I frowned apprehensively fingering the worn-looking tarot card she had passed over for me to take a closer look at. I didn’t know why I had been so scared to even touch the cards, but apparently according to Shannon there was a lot of misconceptions about devil shit.  
“No, Frank!” She giggled. “I told you, the Death card can mean the death of something unpleasant in your life, it can mean new beginnings. Like, you know in winter when everything in nature is cold and dead but then spring always come around and revives it? That’s how I see the death card. Saying that, in summer you’re always going to get the odd cold day, aren’t you? To me that represents that negative shit can always crop up when things are going good, but you shouldn’t let it ruin your whole summer, you know?”  
“Yeah,” I began to contest, “but what’s the point in be excited about spring and summer when you know winter is just going to come back and kill everything again?”  
“Well, that should give you hope more than anything. Life is full of life and death, positives and negatives, but it always comes back around. Besides, I like fall and winter, it gives you the chance of new beginnings. If things stayed good all the time then you wouldn’t appreciate them.” I mean, I just kind of liked the changing seasons because of Halloween and Christmas, I never really knew it could get that deep.  
“You’re so smart,” I blurted out, not being able to hide my admiration for her apparent wisdom. Her intelligence wasn’t with books or mathematics, no, it was much deeper than that. Shannon was knowledgable about life and how to not take things at face value, which I was always a little guilty of. I still didn’t necessarily believe in all the spirituality shit she was educating me on, but it was nice to think things were bigger than I could comprehend, suddenly making me feel a little less like I was fighting a battle alone.  
“Smart enough I keep that dickhead around despite his negative emotional baggage?” She smirked referring to Tom.  
“I get that,” I glanced at her, “but if you didn’t have the bad, you wouldn’t appreciate the good now would you?”   
“Good boy!” She laughed at my recital of her ideologies. “Cigarette?” She asked getting a tin out of her dressing gown pocket and pulling out a janky looking roll-up.  
“No thank you,” I denied not feeling the need of a dizzy nicotine hit. “I thought you didn’t like smoking?” I frowned.  
“No, I like to smoke,” she smirked, “but I pay the bills so I decide who smokes here. Besides, between me and you, I’m not all too keen on Delo, so he’s not smoking in my home.”  
“Me neither,” I grinned back, realising I did not regret my decision to come here at all anymore. It dawned on me I needed the negativity of Joe around on this bitterly cold winter afternoon to comprehend what Shannon was trying to teach me in the first place.  
“If you won’t take my cigarettes, then take this,” she leaned over me into a box full of small stones and pressed something cold but weighty in my palm.  
“Shannon, I can't take this!” I glanced down at the tiny piece of rose quartz she has placed in my hand.  
“Yeah you can, you’re different, I can feel it!” She beamed up at me.

Before I could even properly thank her, the door to the hallway opened and there stood there with a confused looking expression was Gerard.  
“I thought you’d gone home,” he mumbled, his cheeks flushed with liquor. I still disliked him in that moment, but with the press of the cool stone in my hand, I felt a little more invincible.  
“Nope, he’s been keeping me company,” Shannon answered for me, gathering up all of her trinkets.   
“Oh well, my mom wants us home, bug,” he shuffled awkwardly on his feet.   
“Well, you can go on your own, can’t you?” Shannon answered again.  
“Yeah but-“ he halted, realising he had no real reason for me to come with him. It wasn’t like he was my boyfriend or anything.  
“It’s fine, I’m coming,” I got to my feet, the screeching of the chair on the cheap linoleum suddenly not sounding quite so shrill to me anymore.  
“Well, you don’t be a stranger now, Frankie,” she leant over and kissed my cheek, taking both me and Gerard by surprise before disappearing back to her room.  
“ _Frankie?_ I didn’t realise you were quite on that level with her,” he seemed annoyed as he glanced at the floor. The power that the nickname held seemed pathetic to me, it was either used by those who loved me most or those who wanted to mock me, but when Shannon said it, it felt normal.  
“Yeah, well,” I shrugged ambiguously before pushing past him rudely.

I knew I was going to have to walk through the living room where all his intoxicated friends were, but I simply pressed the stone further into my hand, well hidden in my hoodie pocket as I strutted through proudly. When I got in the dreaded living room, it appeared most of the others had left already and it was only Ross, Tom and unfortunately Joe remaining.  
“Heres Mr steal your girl!” Joe announced loudly at my arrival. “Tom as if you’ve let him wander off with your girl for like an hour!”  
“As long as she’s happy, I’m happy,” Tom tried to shrug off his taunts.  
“Was she showing you all of her voodoo witch shit?” Joe sniggered, his naive racism making us all cringe.  
“Delo, leave it,” Tom warned. I fully expected Joe to argue back with his much weaker friend, but instead, he shrugged and they resumed their conversation on how his brother may have the slight possibility of working with some D-list grime artist I only knew of because of Gerard.   
As I turned to leave, silently trying to hurry Gerard out of the room whilst he was saying goodbye I heard my name being called.  
“Yeah?” I spun around to see Ross stood there awkwardly, the flashbacks of Gerard’s lips landing on the corner of my mouth last night coming back all too quickly.  
“I just wanted to catch you alone,” he glanced over his shoulder nervously to make sure Joe was not listening, and I just knew what was coming. I blinked for a little too long, preparing for what was about to come, but instead, I was met with something else.  
“I was wondering, did you wanna have a kick about tomorrow?” He asked nervously, sounding like a nervous kid asking somebody on a date.  
“Erh, sure,” I agreed, slightly numb with relief with the fact he didn’t mention the fact my best friend tried to kiss me in front of him last night.  
“Sweet! I’ll text you!”   
“Okay,” I replied a little dumbfounded.   
——-

“Why aren’t you talking to me, baby?” Gerard whined, struggling to keep up with me in the ice with his uncoordinated, drunk and gangly legs.  
“I am talking to you,” I replied bluntly.  
“No, I mean _talking_ to me!”   
“What’s there to say? Once again you make a fool of me to make yourself look better!”  
“I did that because what else was I supposed to say? I fucked up last night and told him things I shouldn’t have, I had to say something to get it out of his mind!”  
“Yeah, too right you fucked up! Ross hasn’t mentioned it yet, but what if he asks me tomorrow?”  
“Asks you what?” He frowned.  
“Why you tried to kiss me!”  
“I didn’t- oh shit!” He cursed from behind me. I couldn’t see his face, but I knew had it had become stricken with panic. “I’ll just say I was aiming for your cheek and-“  
“Oh, and what about when you told me to take my clothes off in front of him?”  
“I-“  
“No!” I spun around to face him for the first time since we began our bitter walk back to his house. “This isn’t just your life Gerard! This is mine and you keep fucking it up!”  
“I’m sorry!”  
“Well, sometimes sorry isn’t good enough!” I immediately changed direction, taking a sharp left instead of the right, and began to walk back to my house instead of his.  
“Frank,” he cried futilely, I wasn’t turning around for him.  
I was perhaps a little too cocky to believe he wouldn’t be able to catch me, but after all, I was the one who was used to running on all sorts of terrain and he was the one who could barely run properly. Still, I tried to not react to the way he harshly grabbed on my wrist, nor when he pressed his warm lips to my own but I was only human after all. My hands were still bunched tightly in my pocket clutching that fucking rock, but I could not stop the way my lips worked their way naturally against his own as his hand graciously stroked at my cheek whilst the other clutched my arm to keep me in place. He pulled back slightly, resting his forehead on my own, his lips red from the kiss and his eyes bitter yet sweet like when you bit a ripe, tart lemon.  
“I’m sorry, I panicked,” he mumbled sincerely, making me melt and contrast against the harsh winds whipping and nipping at our exposed flesh. I could not find the words to say, so instead, I acted on impulse and kissed his inviting lips, this time deepening it enough to move my tongue against his own. It was dangerous, we were out in the open, but it felt too God damn good to stop.  
“Come on, you’re shivering,” he mumbled against my mouth as I refused to let his lips go fully. Instead, I kept pecking at them trying to entice him into a deep kiss once more.  
“M’fine,” I grumbled.  
“Nah, come on all my family are out at my aunt's so we can make out on the sofa and be warm at the same time,” he giggled.  
“I thought your mom wanted us home?" I frowned thinking back to what he’d said earlier in Shannon’s kitchen.  
“Oh, that was a lie, I just wanted to be alone with you,” he laughed searching in my hoodie pocket for my bunched up fist with the intentions of joining our hands. Holding hands was a pretty juvenile act, but it still made my heart pump viciously against my rib cage.   
“What the fuck are you holding?” He frowned opening my palm in front of his face and reviling Shannon’s gifted rose quartz.  
“Ah, it’s a long story,” I began as we recommenced walking to his house as I told him all about my weird, yet beneficial conversation with his friend’s girlfriend in her kitchen.

—-

I woke up in his warm bed with my head feeling a little hazy. The night before we had found his mother’s extensive fruit-flavoured gin collection and gotten a little tipsy together as we giggled creating new flavours by mixing them together. Despite my heavy head, I did not exactly regret my decision to mix raspberry gin with a blood orange one because, for the first time in my life, I think I had fully enjoyed being drunk. We were laughing all evening, playing old songs before collapsing on the sofa in a messy kiss before maybe a little accidentally drunk fucking right in his family’s living room. For such a pretty pink drink, that fruity little gin seemed to hypnotise me into doing some crazy shit.

“Morning,” Gerard mumbled sleepily from next to me, content with the memories from the night before.  
“Hi,” I beamed, kissing him deeply before he had the chance to say much.  
“My mom came down when you were still sleeping, she’s made us your pre-birthday breakfast,” he smiled once we separated long enough to speak.  
“Oh yeah? Buzzing!” I shot awake. I wasn’t even a breakfast kind of person, but there was just something about the way Gerard’s mom cooked pancakes that did something to me. It was a tradition that I would go to Gerard’s house the day before my birthday to celebrate with my second family, but this year things were just that little bit better.

As I walked upstairs to his open-plan kitchen, I could vaguely see Pete sat on the very same sofa I had been fucked on the night before, making me cringe a little but smirk all at the same time.  
“Morning sweethearts!” His mom called, chirpier than usual, probably because she had a rare morning away from work.  
“Morning mom,” Gerard yawned, greedily accepting the pancakes she placed in front of him. I think both me and his mother were shocked at his eagerness to eat something so full of calories, but neither of us wanted to stop it so did not push the matter.  
“Frank!” Pete said coming into the kitchen a little more confidentially than I expected, being closely followed by Mikey.  
“Hey, bro!” I accepted his newfound willingness to talk to me instead of shying away.  
“Gerard said it was your birthday tomorrow, so I got you this,” he blushed tossing something in my direction across from the breakfast bar. “I don’t really have much money so it’s just something really small and if you don’t like it that’s fine, I just wanted to say thank you for … you know,” he glanced up nervously at Gerard and Mikey’s mom to make sure she couldn’t hear.  
“You didn’t have to get me anything, but thanks!” I picked up the small object to see it was a guitar pick which adorned Alex Turner’s beautiful face.  
“Ha, thanks, man!” I smirked admiring the thing before placing it carefully in my pocket.  
“No problem,” Pete blushed, “Gerard says you were gonna get back into playing and shit so I thought it’d be good!”  
“Did he now?” I glanced at Gerard who was pretending not to listen to our conversation. “Anyway, I love it, thanks, Pete!”  
“No problem,” he blushed again before scuttling off and meeting Mikey’s demands of playing Fortnite.

We had a nice conversation with Bethany before my phone buzzed and reminded me of the plans I had for the day. It was Ross asking me to meet him at the field after lunchtime, which only made me nervous all over again. I feared this was all a setup and Joe and everyone would be waiting to kick the shit out of me, so I dragged a moody looking Gerard along with me, despite his protests at the freezing cold temperature.

I realised I had been stupid though when we finally got to the field and there was Ross sat there on his own, with a child-like grin and a ball tucked safely under his arm.  
“Hey!” He called to me and Gerard, and that was it, it was almost like we had been friends for years with the way we gelled so well.

I kept waiting for him to bring up the almost kiss, but he didn’t. Instead, he spoke only about football and how genuinely excited he was to play the sport again. In fact, when twilight fell at around 4 o’clock I wasn’t even really ready to leave, but I feared if I didn’t Gerard would die of hypothermia. He had joined in for a while before he seemed to remember his hatred for the sport and instead sat on the bench only really getting up to get yet another coffee from the small van that was parked on the outskirts of the park. The coffee tasted like piss, but it seemed to be good enough to keep him there even with his tiny teeth chattering.   
“I should go,” I panted heavily, suddenly feeling just how cold it was once I had stopped running about making me feel just a little guilty at the fact Gerard had sat there for three hours freezing his balls off.  
“Finally!” Gerard leapt to his feet, draining the last dregs of his fourth coffee.  
“I’ve had fun, we should do this again!” Ross said, equally as out of breath as me.  
“Me too, just let me know when you’re free.”  
“Tomorrow?” He responded, hopefully.  
“Ah, it’s my birthday tomorrow,” I answered him, feeling guilty I was letting him down. I just didn’t think my mother would be best pleased if I ruined all of her birthday plans for me with even more soccer.  
“Oh sweet, what are you doing?” Ross asked despite Gerard’s impatience to get home.  
“We’re dragging him out,” Gerard chuckled throwing his arm around my shoulder, not really caring how it could have looked to someone who had already seen too much.  
“Yeah, it’s gonna be shit though, I don’t wanna go,” I grumbled, my protest being futile though because Matt had our night out all planned apparently.  
“Don’t worry, bug, I’ll get you some pretty pink gin if it’ll make you feel better, you don’t have to drink beer like the rest of us,” Gerard smirked down at me.  
“I’m actually more dreading the shit music, to be honest, Gerard,” I scowled at him.  
“Nah, you should go to Yellow’s!” Ross beamed.  
“Huh?” Both me and Gerard frowned at him.  
“It’s a club, you know on that street where that cool bar is, yano Chaplin’s, G?”  
“Yeah,” Gerard agreed.  
“What cool bar?” I frowned.  
“That’s for another time,” Ross giggled, “but yeah if you walk past there it’s four doors down on the corner! They play the shit you’re into as well as some guilty little emo pleasures.”  
“Ah, sounds like your kind of place, Frank,” he smirked referring to my tragic emo past.  
“Yeah, I mean, you can come if you want,” I mumbled at Ross, unsure of why I was even asking him in the first place. I just felt it was a little rude to not invite him to somewhere he suggested, besides, I did quite like him.  
“Oh, I don’t think your friends really like me,” he responded equally as awkward.  
“Nah, Kenny likes everyone, even Joe,” I laughed.  
“Yeah, you gotta come, Rossy! Save me from these tragic soccer dorks, even though you kind of are one.” Gerard rolled his eyes like a fucking princess.  
“Are you sure? Don’t feel like you have to invite me because-“  
“I want you there, Ross. My house, at 8 o’clock, I’ll text you my address!” I bumped his fist before departing ways with my apparent new friend.

Inviting Ross to my birthday could have gone one of two ways; we could all have a great time and life would be good, or things could fuck up so badly for me that I wasn’t even sure how I could go about fixing it.


	53. Find someone who loves you better than I do

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Hey I'm not sure how I feel about this chapter but I'm just getting back into writing so I hope it's good enough... ANYWAY a lot happens in this chapter because the story is kinda moving on and I needed to set up for quite a few events to happen
> 
> ALSO FUN STORY I went to a gin festival last weekend and the guy Joe is based off came up and apologised for acting the way he does lol because yes, he actually acts like he does in this story a lot of the time. Despite his apology I still prefer him as being the villain in this story hahaha
> 
> Anyway as always ill link the songs im referring to here just incase anyone wants to listen :)
> 
> I HATE Ed Sheeran but this acoustic cover has always done something to me so this is how Ross sings his first song: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tHlsbvzE-cU
> 
> The second song is actually a Noah Cyrus one but I like including songs that already exist so people can hear them https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KhjTa_7Nq6Y 
> 
> the 60s song in the club https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=foar5MWhiOY
> 
> the AM song https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pDYlWAf-ekk
> 
> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JUBAQuJfq_0 - the dance song (it's a bit weird I'm sorry I just thought it fit lol)

I don’t know why I thought waking up being aged 18 would feel any different, but it didn’t. I wasn’t happy now just because I was an apparent adult, no, I was happy because the love of my life was sprawled next to me, even if he was hogging the duvet. I laughed to myself thinking back to what I knew was an empty promise Gerard had decided to make last night when he had sworn he was going to get up early and get me a coffee. As far as I could tell, there was no caffeine next to me, just the sound of his soft snores with no signs of them stopping anytime soon. I mean, it didn’t even feel like my birthday, what more could I possibly have wished for? Instead of immediately getting up and running downstairs to receive attention from my mother like I had done so many times on my birthday when I was younger, I simply lay on my side adoring my best friend next to me.

Looking at Gerard, there was no sign of life, no indication that his face was well worn because there were no smile wrinkles around his eyes. Yeah, we were hardly old, but his eyes didn’t crease in the same way others our age did because I don’t think he had smiled enough in his lifetime to earn them. Either that or the guy had found the fountain of youth or something. There was something about the sincerity in his face which made it impossible for me to deny the way my fingers reached out to gingerly stroke his face, but that appeared to disrupt his sleep as his pretty eyes fluttered awake.  
“Sorry,” I whispered into the dark room only illuminated by the crack of the winter morning sunlight seeping through my curtains. I knew my apology was futile, Gerard could sleep through a fucking world war, I was sure of it.   
“Mmpgh,” he simply mumbled, scrunching his face up and nuzzling back into my duvet to sleep.

It wasn’t long before the boredom of waiting for Gerard to wake up, and the clock hitting 9 o’clock made it impossible to wait any longer. I left the lazy oaf sleeping whilst I crept downstairs to give myself that coffee that was promised by another.  
“Morning, Franks,” my father nodded, barely glancing up from his newspaper from behind his glasses.  
“Oh, where’s mom?” I frowned feeling slightly disappointed that my over eccentric mother wasn’t there to smother me in birthday affection.  
“They had a breakthrough in that case last night so she had to go into the office for the morning. She’s promised to be back by lunchtime, don’t be too hard on her because you know what she’s like, the guilt is eating her alive!” My father smirked at my overzealous mother. Truth be told, despite my disappointment, I didn’t really need anyone but Gerard there at that moment. My life was fucking sweet, even if I did have to endure a night out in town at the hands of the one who had made it that way. Matt did not take it lightly that we were no longer going to go with his plan so we had softened the blow to him by promising him we would go to the German bar he had suggested another time so that he could still see the ‘ _normal_ ’ girls. I was unsure at what that meant, but Gerard had chuckled and suggested that the girls on this unknown street were not exactly Matt’s type. I had never heard of the place, and Gerard simply shrugged off the fact that he had, only leaving me more confused because it wasn’t exactly somewhere he and his friends would go by the sounds of it. I didn’t care though, Gerard could walk me straight into Hell itself and I probably wouldn’t notice, I’d be too lost in him to care.  
“Happy birthday by the way,” My dad mumbled once he had gone back to reading about Brexit and I had busied myself with the coffee pods. I decided I was going to treat myself today and go for the whole milk cappuccino instead of the skimmed, what a fucking way to turn eighteen.   
“Oh, nice of you to remember,” I smirked, not really being offended at my father’s lack of attention. I always assumed I’d taken after my dad in that respect, always play fighting and taking the piss out of others, but never needing cringe-filled affection to thrive. That was until Gerard had started to give it to me, and now it felt like a fucking hallucinogenic dopamine release. Maybe I was more like my mother than I had once believed.  
“Well, your mom’s made me promise not to let you open any gifts or anything until she’s home so there’s not a lot I can do for you, kiddo. That is unless you want me to take you to get one of those over-priced drinks instead of that,” he motioned to my steaming mug. My dad was an instant coffee granules kind of guy, but this wasn’t world war II and I wasn’t going to drink that piss water crap.   
“Nah, we could just watch soccer AM instead?” I suggested, not really feeling the need to step outside into the brisk morning quite yet.  
“Sounds perfect,” he sighed in relief that he didn’t have to replicate the over-ecocentrism of my mother on my birthday, and I was quite happy to just watch the goals of the week.

Gerard didn’t wake up until past 11, sulking downstairs hidden beneath my over-sized dressing gown with his hair sticking up awkwardly despite its new short style.  
“Morning, or should I say afternoon?” My father laughed at him, Gerard responding at simply rolling his eyes at the dad joke.  
“Hey, it’s not 12 yet,” he grumbled, going straight to the kitchen to get a coffee that he so obviously needed. The fact they had that kind of relationship already established made me swell inside, making me feel lucky I didn’t need the awkward stage of getting to know each other's families. Yeah, it was going to be fucking awkward if we ever came to eventually tell them the truth, but it still beat tip-toeing around an unfamiliar household with a family you did not really know.  
“I can’t believe it’s my birthday and you haven’t even mentioned it,” I crept quietly into the kitchen, making Gerard jump and scold himself a little with the hot beverage he was handling. Instead of sympathy, I just giggled at him, still displaying my father’s boyish traits somehow.   
“Dickhead,” he grumbled, poking out his tongue to lick the spilt drink off his hand.  
“You fucking gremlin,” I turned my nose at him in disgust. "Just wash your God damn hands!"  
“If it wasn’t your birthday, I’d totally beat your ass right now.”  
“Oh, don’t make excuses for not being able to beat my ass,” I grinned at him from behind the breakfast bar.  
“Be careful, shorty,” he mockingly scowled at me.  
“Come on then,” I mocked him right back, holding my middle finger to his face to taunt him further.  
“Right,” he placed the coffee down and took me by surprise by hoisting himself over the breakfast bar to get to me. I had never seen the guy move so quickly before lunchtime, making me giggle maniacally as I began to run away from him. Sure, Gerard was suddenly displaying speed, but it didn’t make him more nimble than me. He attempted to block my exit by diving in front of me but I simply ducked under his arm and continued to run through my house.

He chased me right into the living room, me taking the opportunity of my mother’s lack of presence to jump all over the sofas to avoid Gerard’s play-punches.   
“Knob heads,” my father grumbled, trying to duck from left to right to see the TV from behind us.  
“Sorry!” I continued to laugh as Gerard chased me back into the kitchen. It wasn’t long before he eventually cornered me in-between the kitchen island at the cabinets, panting heavily at the way I had managed to run rings around him.  
“ _No_!” I squealed as he approached me, outstretching his fingers to tickle me. My resistance was futile though as he got me in a headlock as we began to fight. There was no malice to it, in fact, it was quite usual for us to do this. What used to not happen though was that instead of fighting we’d end up just making out in my kitchen. I was unsure on how it had even happened, but when our lips were joined, I found it impossible to drag myself away from his warm mouth. He pecked at my lips, still holding my wrists tightly from when he had been protecting himself from my jabs back at him.   
“Your mother’s home,” my father's voice suddenly came through to the kitchen as I pushed Gerard away harshly. “So can you both stop prating around before I get the blame for putting her precious babies in danger, please?”  
“I-erh,” I blushed profusely. I was almost sure he had seen us kissing, but then again, he had not blinked an eye. Although I was paranoid, I was certain he would have most definitely mentioned it at least. I was panicked, but the normality to my father’s voice as he carried on to tell me about the goal that Man City had scored was actually pretty impressive, and that was coming from a Liverpool fan, calmed me down. No, it had been a narrow escape, but miraculously we had done it. Besides, I didn’t have time to dwell on the matter before my mother came rushing through the door, still dressed in her work suit and her hair scraped back into a tight bun, smothering me in kisses and squeezing me half to death.  
“Get off, mom!” I whined, wiping at the inevitable lipstick stains I knew for a fact would be covering my cheeks.  
“My baby isn’t even a baby anymore!” She wailed despite almost being as tall as me in her 4-inch work heels.   
“Don’t worry, I’ll always be a baby if it means you carry on doing stuff for me,” I sighed accepting her mothering.  
“My little prince,” she said pinching my cheek and wrapping her arms around my waist.  
“You make me sick,” my dad rolled his eyes at us, “please tell me your mom does not treat you like a 5-year-old too, G?”  
“Absolutely not,” he smirked knowing full well he was a mommy’s boy even more than I was.  
“Really? Because your mom was just telling me how she was almost late this morning because she was ironing your shirt for your boys night out later!” My mom mocked him, ruffling his already messy bedhead.   
“Don’t you laugh at me, bug, or I’ll give your present to the orphanage,” he jokingly warned me to stop laughing at him.  
“No, give it to me!” I demanded, running through to the living room to sit in the spot I opened my presents in to follow the annual tradition. Just like that, I was that little ecstatic kid all over again.

My family's gifts were pretty standard, and way too much in expense just like always. I was extremely grateful for everything apart from the mocking 10 pack of driving lessons they had given me.   
“About time!” Gerard declared.  
“I don’t want to drive!” I grumbled.  
“Well, son, I thought for your eighteenth I might have been having to put a deposit down on a car for you, so you’re going to have to. Gerard, you tell him!” My dad added.  
“Yeah, you’re booking those in before you get too lazy and they go out of date!” Gerard agreed with my parents, much to my annoyance. I know it would have been pretty useful to drive and have a car, but there was just something about sitting in Gerard’s passenger seat with his strong hand on my thigh with his fingers loosely linked with my own whilst there was a clear road ahead that felt so good that I didn’t want to stop it by having to do a fucking ten to two motion like every new driver. _“Feed the wheel!”_ Gerard would yell at me when we were practising my shit driving, like I would ever want two hands on the fucker when I could be touching him instead.

“Okay, well my present for you is in my car because it’s kinda hard to hide,” Gerard suddenly announced, getting to his feet and hurrying quickly to his car which was parked outside like an excited child.   
“Thank you,” I said sincerely to my parents now that we were alone although I had already said it a million times. The truth was, I needed something to fill the air because I was becoming increasingly prone to talking about Gerard. Sure, I had always admired him so therefore always spoke about him a lot of the time, but now I was so sure that I loved him it was even worse. It was weird, no matter how much I told myself to just act cool to avoid suspicions, I just couldn’t stop finding any possible way to bring up his name in conversation.  
“I already said, baby, you’re worth it,” my mother replied busying herself with tidying away the wrapping paper I had hastily ripped off and thrown everywhere only moments earlier.  
“Yeah but Gerard said-“ Damn. I really couldn’t fucking help myself, could I?

At that moment I appeared to be saved by the guy himself as I heard him coming through the door, panting and heaving obviously struggling with something.  
“Do you want help?” I called, stifling my laughter as I heard something clatter against the door frame as he made his way through to the living room where we were all sat.  
“No! You close your eyes!” He yelled into the room.  
“But-“  
“Close your God Damn eyes, Frank!”   
“Fine,” I grumbled, following his wish trying to resist the urge to peek.   
“Oh, G!” I heard my mother say as he came into the room. “How lovely!”  
“Yeah, that is so nice of you!” My father added, even sounding impressed himself.  
“What?” I asked impatiently as everyone got to see this supposed gift before I did.  
“Close your eyes, put your hands out and say I’m the best friend in the whole world,” Gerard toyed.   
“My eyes are closed!” I argued.  
“Fine, you’re not having it then!”  
“Fine! Gerard, you are the best friend in the entire world, now can I have my present?” I grumbled and hold out my hands.  
“Good boy,” he finally gave in a passed me something. It was bigger than I had expected it to be, more awkwardly shaped as the object left a cool touch to my warm palms. It did not take long for my brain to register what the object was, something that I had learnt off by heart in my youth, something that I had almost forgotten. I tried to delay opening my eyes for as long as possible to comprehend the present, after all, I didn’t know whether to kiss or punch him, maybe I should have done both. After a second I blinked my eyes open, choosing to look awkwardly in Gerard’s direction instead of downwards to the shiny black guitar that adorned my hand.   
“Well, say something then,” Gerard scowled at me at what he thought was me being ungrateful. I wasn’t though, I just wasn’t sure what he was trying to do to me. He knew I had given up the stupid thing a long time ago, only really entertaining my old hobby to get a good grade in my music class, so I didn’t know why he was taunting me with it. Times had changed, I wasn’t thirteen anymore and I didn’t have endless hours to piss away trying to be the next Noel fuckin’ Gallagher, but Gerard would never accept that. My fingers almost trembled as I stroked the shiny curve of the wood, my prints almost tarnishing the pristine exterior of the instrument, reminding me of everything I had given up. If you had two loves of your life, you should always go with the first one, right? But there was just something so tantalisingly fascinating to me about the affair I had with music. Soccer meant everything to me and Gerard fucking knew that, so it was beyond me why he would tease me with something he knew I could never fall back into. I did still love music, that much was obvious, but I knew I was never meant to be anybody more than that fool at a party playing the same four-chord song. I was an all or nothing kind of person, if I couldn’t devote myself fully to playing the beautiful guitar, then I didn’t fucking want it.

I was unsure why I did it, but it all got too much as I tossed the guitar perhaps a little too carelessly to the side of me, making the strings cry out in a heart-wrenching manner at my apparent rejection.   
“Frank!” My mother snapped at me as I shot to my feet and pushed past from where they were gathered watching me like some fucking caged up zoo animal. I stormed my way upstairs ignoring the way my parents were furiously yelling at me to get back down there and be the grateful little sucker that I should be.

I sat against my bedroom wall losing track of time, just mindlessly tossing the small softball I had in my room against the wall. I knew the noise of it bouncing infuriated Gerard usually, but maybe I wanted to piss him off. Maybe it was just a cry for attention though, a passing thought suggested in my head as I subconsciously started to bounce the ball harder and therefore louder than before.  
“Frank, I swear to God if you don’t stop bouncing that fucking ball I’m going to ram it so far up-“ I heard from behind me just as I had nearly given up on him chasing me. I was annoyed at him, I told him I couldn’t fuck about with music anymore, but he had still gone against what I had wanted because he had his selfish fucking blinkers on. Just because I was annoyed at him, however, did not mean I wasn’t purposely trying to get him to chase me. “Oh, wait are you actually pissed off at me?”  
Instead of replying, I turned away like a fucking child. I knew I was acting like an ungrateful moron, but I couldn’t help it, something just came over me.   
“ _Frankieeee_ ,” he whined, slouching next to me and resting his head on my shoulder affectionately whilst contrastingly harshly grabbing my wrist to rip the small blue ball from my tensed up grip. “Don’t go mardy because I’m trying to tell you not to give up on something you’re good at!”  
“I told you not to push it!” I snapped at him.  
“What?” He asked, genuinely baffled at my rudeness.  
“Why the fuck would you get me a guitar when you know I can’t play that shit?”  
“I just thought the one you have is old as fuck and it’s been out of tune for fucking months! I thought it would inspire you to actually want to do it again!”  
“Well, you’re a fucking idiot because you’ve spent a lot of money on something that I can't touch!”  
“Why cant you touch it?”  
“I’m not good enough, Gerard! Plus, you know I’m busy with soccer, why the fuck do you hate me playing it so much?”  
“ _Woah, woah, fuckin’ woah_! When have I ever hated you playing soccer? Yeah, I hate the game but I love the way it makes you happy.”  
“Then why are you trying to drag me away from it?”  
“Stop being so uptight! You do realise you can have more than one fucking hobby, right?”  
“No, I can’t! Why have you just sat there and taunted me with something I can't have?” I sighed heavily at him, my voice cracking slightly with emotion as it became ever so apparent I was not really upset over a guitar, and maybe just what it represented. My projection onto an inanimate object was pretty pathetic, the guitar wasn’t the one who had lead me on, it hadn’t said it had loved me and fucked somebody else and it didn’t continue to make me fall deeper in love with it. To me, the guitar had reminded me of everything that had come to an end in my life, because I wasn’t fourteen anymore. I wasn’t sat crossed leg on my bed after school anymore, tongue poking out with concentration as I focused all my time onto trying to mimic the same hand movements as my idols on the instrument. My best friend may still have been sat next to me, but it wasn’t the same. He wasn’t naive and innocent any longer, he could be evil and manipulative because he was so damaged and the worst bit about it was that he was fucking good at ruining people. God, I wished I could go back to that time and change things, back before adult life inevitably made things get messy and a harmless crush and a cheap guitar were the only things to possess my mind. I think perhaps I was so obsessed with keeping soccer as my only hobby because it was mine. I did not share that ball with Gerard like I did the strangled musical notes I had forced out all those years ago. We still sometimes fucked about together musically, but it was never with the same hope or desperation we had played with back then because things had changed. We weren’t kids anymore, life was no longer a simple progression of chords, it was a complicated mess of disjointed notes that created a minor melody in which I was either going to have to learn to play along to or give it all up forever and go back to the safety of football, the world in which he did not exist to me.   
“I’m sorry! I just thought you’d like it but I guess I can try and send it back and-“ he sounded upset with my rejection of his thoughtful gift. Oh, how I wanted to scream in his face that it wasn’t the gift I hated, it was the representation of the things I had lost, but I couldn’t find the words nor heart to explain it to him. We had been so happy that I had almost been able to kid myself that I was not still wounded that he had hurt me, but I guessed the higher you rose the inevitable fall was always going to hurt more.  
“No, G, I love it,” I sighed. My skin felt hot and uncomfortable still with the sudden memory that his hands had touched another in the same way they had touched me, but the broken look in his eyes made me guiltily conform to what he wanted. I mean it wasn’t a lie, the guitar was fucking sick and I dreaded to think how much it had cost, but I feared accepting it would only lead to more disappointments. As soon as the heat left my cheeks and the tormenting thoughts eased from my head, I realised then on how cruel I had been. Yes, things had changed between us now we were older and apparently adults, but somethings were of course for the better. I reminded myself of that by taking him by surprise by turning suddenly and locking my lips on his own, something the fourteen-year-old version of myself would never have dreamt of doing.   
“You confuse me, bug,” Gerard frowned as I pulled back and released him from my grasp, panting slightly at the intensity of the kiss.   
“I confuse myself,” I said honestly, not truly understanding the rollercoaster in my own mind.   
“Do you really love it?” He frowned at me.  
“I fucking love it, G. Now, how the fuck did you afford that?”  
“Well, I didn’t need all that money my grandparents gave me for my birthday, did I?”

I told my parents I had stormed off as a joke, them barely believing the excuse, but letting the matter go for the sake of my birthday. Although I could now stand to be next to the extravagant gift, I could not yet find it within me to play it. It was weird, with my old guitar I may not have disturbed it in a while but I could piss about with it no problem, but I felt stringing chords on the new one was me accepting the change in my life. Besides, I didn’t necessarily have time to dwell about the past or changing future because my mother had over-packed the day full of expensive lunches and family visits and before I knew it I was being rushed to get ready by Gerard as we heard the door go from downstairs.  
“HAPPY BIRTHDAY, FRANK!” Kenny rushed into my house, smothering me in a bone-crushing hug and throwing a wrapped gift in my arms.

——

My parents had hastily left at the arrival of my friends, excusing themselves to the late-night showing of some musical so that I could get the space that they thought I so desperately wanted. The truth was, I only invited my closest of friends for the night so I did not have to wear some fucking mask. In front of my soccer team, I had to be somebody else. I loved them all so dearly, yet I had to be fucking careful what I said because I didn’t think I could trust them with the truth. No, instead I wanted to be sprawled all over Gerard’s lap being smothered in his neck kisses as I eagerly opened the gifts that my friends had gotten for me. Things between James and I weren’t necessarily strained, but he wouldn’t really look at us. I had almost being to think he was going to be in sulky mood all evening until he presented me with a messily wrapped,large and square package.  
“What is it?” I asked excitably as I tried to feel what it was.  
“Open it and see, you doughnut,” he rolled his eyes at my child-like idiosyncrasies. Fuck, he didn’t have to tell me twice as I ripped off the shiny gold wrapping paper.   
“Awesome!” I grinned down at the Arctic Monkey’s record he had bought for me.  
“I mean, you did say you wanted to get a record player so I though, yano, what better way to start off your collection than the best of the best?” James replied, his cheeks flushing a little pink with modesty.  
“I love it, thanks!” I grinned, leaning forwards and hugging him, getting off Gerard’s lap in the process. Although I felt him stiffen beside me as I engulfed my second closest friend in an embrace, I just felt a lot better about the situation. James and Gerard were hardly friends, but tonight their differences seemed to be surpassed for my sake. Perhaps he held onto me for a little too long for a friend, but Gerard seemed to endure it, even though I knew he would probably have found it less painful to stand on hot coals than bite his tongue on the weirdly long hug. That was until the doorbell rang loud and shrill, the noise sending me crashing back down into my impending reality and my seemingly stupid mistake. Toby and the boys from the soccer team may have stopped me from being my naturally clingy self but at least it wasn’t so much of a death wish if I maybe got a little too tipsy and therefore a little too close to my best friend, but I realised I had fucked up much greater than that. In my spur of happiness yesterday I had appeared to live in a fantasy land by thinking Ross could merge effortlessly into my friends. Yeah, he might have been alright sometimes, but at the end of the day, he was still Joe’s friend and therefore I most definitely didn’t trust him.  
“Who’s that, Frank?” Harry frowned as Gerard got up to open the door.  
“I just didn’t want G to be left out so I-“ I tried to defend my decision to my angry looking friends, despite knowing it was stupid myself. I knew it was my birthday so technically it was my rules, but I couldn’t blame them for being pissed. Although I could not think of a time where Ross was the instigator of their torment, he was still associated with it, therefore, I was not the only one who did not trust him.

Before anyone could protest at the fact I had invited yet another one of Joe’s minion to what was supposed to be our first night out together, because to them that was still what Gerard mainly was, they both came through the door giggling about something we were not invited to share.  
“Yo, Franks!” Ross said eagerly tossing a bag in my direction, the deceptive kindness in his eyes fooling me enough into warming to him a little. “Sorry I’m so late, one of the horses had to be put down today so I was trying to cheer the kids in the club up, yano?”   
Ross’ face-value kind nature almost kidded me into relaxing, damn him and his fucking horse kids club.   
“It’s cool, do you know everyone?” I asked as I tried to avoid the way that James, Matt and Harry were all glaring at me.  
“Erm, kinda,” Ross added almost shyly. “Obviously I know Nath,” he nodded to his friend as I proceeded to introduce him properly to everyone in my group. It went well for saying it was like trying to mix fucking oil and water. Ross took the time to compliment Kenny and his new Allsaints shirt, which of course won him over. Matt and Harry were a little bit harder, but all Ross had to do was talk about soccer and they were all fucking ears. I also thought I saw James flash him a smile when I heard him mention something about their apparent shared computing class.  
“Well, are you gonna open it?” Ross motioned down to the bag he had given to me when he had first arrived that I was still holding.  
“Oh, yeah, erh,” I responded awkwardly. I would have rather him not have gotten me a gift, it just made me feel guiltier for being a little cautious of him. Still, with his waiting eyes, I prised open the bag and pulled out a bottle of a baby yellow coloured liquid complete with shimmering dust to make it sparkle.  
“Gerard said you drank gin now when I asked what to get you, sorry about the fact it’s got that glitter shit in it, it just tastes peng,” Ross mumbled as I examined the bottle of expensive-looking lemon sherbet ‘unicorn’ gin. I looked over at Gerard who was sniggering at the fact I enjoyed drinking something that actually tasted nice instead of the piss-scented beer that they forced down.  
“Thanks, Ross!” I said sincerely, ignoring the way Gerard looked amused at my supposed femininity. “Now pour me a fuckin’ drink,” I passed the bottle to Kenny as he began to decant a little bit too much alcohol for someone who was trying to remain level headed.

——

My words began to slur as did my thoughts, but my inhibitions did not lower. Instead of worrying, however, I was too busy laughing at everything and everyone. Maybe alcohol wasn’t so bad after all, or maybe that was the gin speaking.

Me and Nathan were busy giggling about the way Grimshaw’s left eyebrow always rose a little higher than his right one when he was telling us off, nailing the impression of his stern voice and dancing facial hair when Ross caught my eye. He was staring at something, but it was not a glare, it was more with an intent that left a gleam in his bright blue iris’. My ribs ached with laughter as the humour died down a little leaving me with enough time to follow his gaze right to the disregarded guitar from earlier that my mother had safely tucked behind the side table to avoid damage.  
“Oh, sorry,” Ross mumbled as he caught me staring at him.  
“It’s fine,” I frowned at his unneeded apology.   
“Do you mind if I-“ he reached out his fingertips towards the instrument before stopping just before it like there was some kind of invisible consent field surrounding it.  
“Go for it,” I nodded, willing him to do something with it to take the fear away from it. Walking through a pit full of poisonous snakes was still a stupid idea, but watching someone else do it first was always going to take the scary unknown aspect out of it. By that point, Gerard had stopped drunkenly attempting to educate Kenny on the female anatomy and had redirected his attention towards myself and Ross holding the guitar like a newborn fucking miracle baby. I initially thought he would be mad that I had let someone else touch the gift, but from the look in his eye, there was something else going on.  
“Do you play?” Matt asked loudly, taking away the weird silence that had fallen on the drunken group.  
“A little,” Ross muttered.  
“A little!” Gerard scoffed at his friend's modesty. “He’s fuckin’ sick!”  
“Play something then,” Matt proceeded to push him rudely as if he did not take their word for it. I mean, I could tell why, Ross did not seem like the usual guy to be banging out Wonderwall at a party.  
“I dunno, it’s not my guitar and-“  
“If you can’t, that’s fine!” Matt teased.  
“It’s not that, I just-“  
“No, no! If you can’t play it’s fine!”  
“Ross just fucking play to shut this little dick head up,” Gerard rolled his eyes.  
“But-“  
“Just play!” I shocked myself by speaking, seemingly becoming both more intrigued and impatient as a drunk.  
“Okay, erh,” he audibly swallowed as he began to play a melody we recognised as he hummed under his breath. The melodic tone to his voice shocked me, it’s natural gravely husk not matching his average sounding speaking voice. No one had asked Ross to sing, but it seemed his fingers could not grace the frets of the new guitar without being accompanied by his small, yet promising vocals perhaps out of sheer habit.   
“ _All I want is the taste that your lips allow, my my my my my give me love_ ,” he sang as he appeared to renter the room as his voice trailed off and realised all eyes were on him. I was in complete and utter disbelief that something so effortlessly good had fallen from Ross’ lips. Ross was a follower with the voice of a leader, the appearance of a shadow but the talent of a spotlight, and that was difficult to comprehend. I had assumed we would all be impressed, myself especially admiring how effortlessly the guy could keep in time to complex fingerpicking patterns whilst nailing the timing to his singing, but it appeared Matt would not so easily be swayed.  
“Fucking _woohoo_ ,” he rolled his eyes dramatically, “but any cunt with an acoustic guitar can play an Ed Sheeran song. I think real musicians write their own music.” He stated proudly, as if he had any fucking clue what he was on about and the complexity of it all.  
“He does write his own music!” Gerard snapped defensively.  
“How do you know?” I frowned up at Gerard.  
“He showed me! Ross play _Sophie_ to him!”  
“I-“ Ross replied awkwardly, the dispute between Matt and Gerard escalating in front of him to the point he could not get a word in. “SHUT UP!” He took us all by surprise by the strength in his voice, his hand involuntary strumming my guitar that he was holding. “I actually wrote this little chorus earlier that I’ll play if you want I mean,” he added, his awkwardness taking control again.  
“Yes!” I answered quickly before Matt could ruin this for me. I was aching to hear someone do what I could never quite manage, spill their truths in what I believed to be the most honest way.   
“Okay, well, here goes,” Ross sighed as he began playing something I, of course, did not recognise, yet immediately liked.   
“ _Feels like a lifetime_  
 _Just tryna get by_  
 _While we're dying inside_  
 _I've done a lot of things wrong_  
 _Loving you being one_  
 _But I can't move on_  
 _You know I, I'm afraid of change_  
 _Guess that's why we stay the same_  
 _So tell me to leave, I'll pack my bags, get on the road_  
 _Find someone that loves you better than I do, darling, I know_  
 _'Cause you remind me every day, I'm not enough, but I still stay.”_

“Well, I guess that was alright,” Matt said feeling a little embarrassed that he had been so quick to judge Ross, just assuming his talent went no further than Ed Sheehan covers. I hated to admit, but even I was shocked. To me, all of Joe’s friends were shallow because they cared more about popularity than their own happiness, so how could it be that Ross appeared to be a deep ocean of emotion? Ross playing an emotional song had obviously dampened out intoxicated mood, but I didn’t care. I would have paid to hear that song again, each lyric that had bled from his mind resonating with me. I was instantly envious, not only could he comprehend his feelings in such a way, but he was really fucking good at it too. I didn’t feel worthy for that fucking guitar, especially after Ross’ nimble fingers had treated it better than I ever could.  
“Anyway, it’s Frank’s birthday and his glass is looking suspiciously empty, so I think we should maybe sort that out instead of dwelling on my emo songs,” Ross chuckled, seemingly begging just to get the attention off him and back onto me. I knew he felt uncomfortable with the way everyone was staring at him, but it wasn’t in a bad way.

No matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t let Ross’ talent go.  
“But when did you start?” I frowned at him, everyone else busying themselves in conversation. I knew that I was still hypnotised by the song because Gerard and James were actually engrossed in a conversation on the sofa, without arguing, and I didn’t even give a shit. All I cared about was knowing Ross’ secrets and how the fuck he could help me.  
“I’ve been playing on and off for years,” he shrugged modestly. “How about you?”  
“Oh, I don’t play guitar,” I half lied. It wasn’t like I couldn’t play, I just didn’t, like I said, it reminded me of how good things used to be and was therefore too painful.  
“G said you did,” Ross asked in confusion.  
“Erh, kinda, well I used to at least.”  
“Why did you stop?” He asked with sincerity like he genuinely cared or something.  
“Soccer practises, that kind of stuff,” I fumbled with my response.  
“What kind of stuff?” He pushed.  
“Just took up a lot of time for something I was kinda shit at,” I shrugged it off, perhaps the gin making me a little bit more honest than usual. I was still holding back the information that music was mine and Gerard’s thing, and I was finding it difficult to accept he wasn’t my chubby greb best friend anymore, but it still was more than I would have liked to confess in a sober state of mind.  
“I doubt you were shit!”  
“I was,” I glanced at his interrogating blue eyes for the first time since our conversation began, daring to attempt to see what his deal was. “I just used to copy shit, I could never write my own stuff like that!”  
“Why not?”  
“I have all these thoughts in my head, right? I can never just spit them out as lyrics though!” I stressed.  
“Oh, that sucks, I’m sort of the same. I feel like when my mind is overflowing, it's like a tangled ball of yarn and writing them out as melodramatic lyrics helps a fucktonne!”  
“Well, that’s all good when you can write shit like you can!”  
“Why can’t you?”  
“I don’t have anything to write a song about.” I quickly backtracked. I knew I was contradicting myself, but I just had to be careful  
“Oh come on! You wanna know a secret?” He smirked.  
“What?” I frowned back at him.  
“I wrote that song about Delo like last week when he was being a cunt to me.”  
“What?” I asked in utter confusion at what I had thought to be a love song actually being about Joe.  
“Oh yeah, I just made it into a love song because it meant I could be more melodramatic with it. I tried to think about how Alex, his ex felt and how he makes me feel sometimes I dunno. Rule number one of art, Frank, you can take inspiration and fucking run with it! You like soccer, right? Why don’t you write a song about the feeling you get from that!”  
“I don’t need to write that,” I smirked, “it already exists.”  
“What?”  
“Three Lions!”   
“No, dude,” Ross laughed as if he did not understand my sarcastic comment, but maybe he just realised I was using humour as a defence mechanism. “Like what does it make you feel?”  
“I don’t know! I’m not as good at that shit as you! I can’t find hidden meanings behind shit and turn it into something deep as fuck!”  
“Okay, well, we’ll start with an easier step! You wanna know another secret?”  
“Yes,” I said eagerly hanging on his words begging for him to spill another secret to his talents.  
“Most of my songs are about one thing in particular, well person. Have you never had someone you wanna just scream something at?”  
“Sort of,” I scoffed trying my hardest to not drag my eyes from Ross’ and glare at Gerard.  
“In what respect, love, hatred, sex?” He pushed, his eyes opening wide like large diamonds as they delved for my truths. "They're all good fuel for writing songs!"  
“All of them.”  
“Well, there you go, Frank. You already have something that a lot of people don’t, a fucked-up passion for something.”  
“I dunno.”  
“I’ll help you. You help me with football, I help you with songs, deal?”  
I was unsure whether to accept his offer, after all, music was always something I had just shared with Gerard, not even something James had been able to connect with me on the same level with. It felt weird to share something so personal with essentially someone I should not trust, but his talent was like black magic and I wanted some of it.   
“Deal,” I agreed pushing his shoulder with my own a little as a handshake felt too formal, but I needed something to confirm our agreement.   
“I gotta say though, I didn’t think there was someone that existed that you loved, hated and wanted to fuck all at the same time,” he chuckled, “you always seem so fucking cool. and head strong.”  
And just like that it became apparent to me I had already said too much to someone who had seen something that he shouldn’t. As a panicked response, I looked up to avoid looking suspicious but ended up realising that Gerard had saved me, sort of, grabbing Ross in a weird headlock and dragging him backwards and pouring a shot down his throat. Instead of laughing like the others, my attention was only brought to James’ absence from the group. I felt threat creep it’s way even more up my throat as I realised he was no longer in the room, and I had been too selfishly absorbed in Ross’ advice to track him and Gerard like I should have been doing.  
“Gerard, where’s James?” I frowned as the fucker was too busy giggling at Ross dribbling vodka out of his mouth to notice my pleas.  
“Gerard!” I snapped again, more impatiently and making him halt and switch his gaze to me.  
“He’s in the kitchen,” Kenny answered for him before Gerard pulled him away from me too and hazily poured vodka into his mouth as well. As I got to my feet to find my friend, Gerard tried to pull me back down to join in whilst he played bartender, but for someone who was so captivated by him, I was probably the least interested in his little game.  
“Frank?” He frowned as I snatched my hand from his grip. I was a little unsure on why I had been so vicious with him, but I figured my emotions were heightened through my alcohol consumption. Instead of responding, I walked off to find James.

He was not in my kitchen but had left a traceable trail out of the back door and into the garden by the way the back patio light was shining thought the kitchen window like a fucking beacon. At first, I thought the guy was a little crazy, it was mid-December and he was stood outside in a thin shirt, but I thought he was even crazier when I saw the cigarette hanging from his lips as his stared up with eyes big enough that they challenged the very moon he was lost in.  
“Hey,” I made myself known to him awkwardly, wrapping my arms around myself as I stood in the doorway to shield myself from the freezing cold wind whipping around us. “Everything okay?”  
“Yep,” he smiled in a forced sort of way, almost as if doing it caused him pain.   
“Why you smoking, soccer star?” I braced myself for the cold before stepping down to join him outside.   
“Dunno just fancied a smoke.”  
“You hate smoking!” I accused.  
“Yeah,” he made no effort to argue with me but contradicted his statement by effortlessly taking an over-long drag without choking.  
“Where did you even get that?”  
“Gerard gave it to me, he said I could do with it.”  
“I don’t even know why he’s being such a prick, I-“  
“Frank,” he interrupted me, “he’s not being a prick.”  
“Yeah but-“  
“We were talking about you, he told me he got it, and then he gave me a cigarette.”  
“What about me?”  
“Excuse the cringey metaphor, but you’re a bit like a cigarette, Frank.”   
“Huh?”  
“Like, I know wanting and consuming you is bad for me, but it never makes me stop needing you by my side. You make me feel good, even if you are fucking killing me.”  
“I’m sorry,” I mumbled feeling guilty about something that I could not control.   
“Nah, don’t apologise, I’m done with being mad about it. I realised tonight that you’re happy and I need to accept that, and that’s what I told him.”  
“I don’t understand.”  
“Well, he’s always going to be better for you than I am. I get you a vinyl, he gets you a fucking expensive guitar, yano?”  
“I love that vinyl!” I snapped defensively.  
“Yeah, but it’s not a guitar, is it? Just like you love me, but I’m not Gerard and I never will be.”  
I took a second to comprehend his message, feeling awkward at his truths.  
“I’m sorry,” I mumbled again.  
“I told you, don’t apologise. Just promise me something, yeah?” He smiled at me, dropping the cigarette from his lips and stubbing out the small remains of it with his shoe.  
“Anything!”  
“Just make sure you’re happy and that he always treats you well. Oh, and don’t forget about me!”  
“I fuckin’ won’t,” I smiled at him. “How could I forget the Gerry to my fuckin’ pacemaker!”  
“Good, because I love you, Frank.”  
“I love ya too, man,” I said honestly, just not in the way he wanted me to.  
“Good,” he simply added before beginning to walk back inside.  
“Anyway, how dare you call me a cigarette! They smell bad, you could have been a bit nicer!” I jested.  
“Oh, and what do you suggest?”   
“Maybe like a strawberry vape or something?”  
“You know, Frank, you make it really fucking hard not to be in love with you,” he chuckled.

——-

As soon as I walked back into the living room, I instantly relaxed. I felt I had got the emotional proportion of the evening well and truly out of the way and now I just wanted to enjoy myself. I apologised to Gerard even though he seemed too drunk to care, and I wasn’t that far behind. By the time the taxi came, we had all consumed enough alcohol that we left all our worries in the empty, discarded bottles in my recycle bin.

I obviously spent the whole walk to the club glued to Gerard’s side, falling for every word of his drunken slur as if they were sweet drops of honey. At that point, I was so far gone that I couldn’t have given a shit if I was clinging to him too much to be considered normal in front of Ross because he didn’t seem to care. He simply walked beside us laughing about something I had been too drunk to remember.

I had never been inside a night club before and had always assumed it to be somewhere that I would hate. This wasn’t like what Gerard had described to me though, and I think it took even him by surprise. When we approached the door we hadn’t even been asked for ID, the bouncer looking rather weedy for someone who was there to intimidate drunken dick heads, but I was too attracted to the place to second guess it. I didn't even understand why I wanted to go in so badly as from the outside, the place looked like a dive, the building blacked out with a contradicting red sign that read “Yellow’s”. The spotlights pointing to the building only highlighted it’s tiredness, the thumping of the music pouring out of the cracks and making the streets echo with the bass of it all, but for some reason, I felt tranquil. The outside had been less than impressive and the inside was not much better, the floor was sticky with spilt drinks and sweat and old torn down band posters littered the wall, but it was not unattractive, instead, it made me feel at home.   
“I’ll get you a drink,” Gerard yelled in my ear, battling against the strange 60s music playing at a volume that made me feel as if it was going to send my heartbeat out of rhythm by the vibrations it was causing. I tried to argue and say I could get my own beverage, but it was too late and I had already lost him in the sea of people, so instead, I took the time to take in my surroundings. On one of the side tables stood a girl I felt as if I recognised dancing carelessly, her free black hair flowing behind her resembling caged ravens being set free, her footwork worrying me that she may fall but always missing the edge of the table as if she had practised the action a million times before. She seemed unbothered by the way one of the staff yelled at her to get down, gracefully jumping down and laughing it off as if she had not nearly been kicked out before the night had really begun. As she got down to our level, I almost lost her in the bustle of people before pushing through the crowd to seemingly get closer. It was only then that I realised her pretty green eyes were locked on to my own, and that I definitely knew that girl.  
“Frank!” She approached, her breathing heavy and panted as she had seemingly danced herself to a slight exhaustion.  
“P-Poppy?” I frowned a little unsure if that was even her name. All I knew was that she was that strange girl I had met on Halloween a couple of months ago. She merely laughed at my cautiousness, her husky giggle drawing me in just like it had at the party. If I had not been quite so infatuated with Gerard, I probably would have moved the world just to be next to her, because she screamed something I could not quite seem to grasp; freedom.  
“How have you been, stranger?” She asked me with wide eyes.  
“Good, erm, how have you been?” I asked out of formality more than anything, something she saw straight through with her whimsical ways.  
“Fuck that, Franks, I wanna know why I haven’t seen you around lately.” She spoke as if we were close friends who had spent a little time apart, not like someone I had met briefly once at a party.   
“Been busy,” I shrugged, the mere intensity of her gaze making me both nervous and excited all at the same time.  
“Do you still kick about with G?”  
“Yeah, he’s here I-“  
“Oh, baby boy,” she suddenly looked straight past me at something else, someone who could challenge her mind games. I turned my head to see Gerard stood there smirking, two cups filled to the brim with an amber liquid in his hands. “Is one of those for me?”  
“You fuckin’ wish, Poppy,” he scoffed in jest making no attempt to fight the way she pushed past me to land a red-lipstick kiss right on his mouth. For some reason it was not jealousy which hit me straight away, even knowing their history, it was more frustration. I ached to be like her, careless and confident, but I knew then it wouldn’t have worked. There could not be two people who did not give a shit in some sort of relationship, it just wouldn’t flow. I cared too much and Gerard often did not care enough, that’s how we balanced each other out. Just like Shannon had told me, you can't have the good without the bad.  
“I can’t believe you haven’t been around, G,” she gazed wildly up at him, her lips so close to his exposed neck I didn’t know whether to storm away or stand there and torture myself by watching. “I missed you.”  
“I missed you too.”  
“You broke up with that stupid bitch, didn’t you?”  
“How do you know that?”  
“I know a lot of things, Gerard,” she smirked. “Now, are you going to tell me why you have been hiding my little treasure and keeping him all to yourself?” It took me a while to realise she was referring to me, simply because I was too dumbfounded to realise both their matching sets of emerald eyes were on me. I wasn’t her ‘treasure’, I was merely a little more than a stranger, but with the way she read me, I felt as if she had prised open my mind and spilt my secrets and guts right there on that sticky floor.  
“Ah, he’s not a party guy,” Gerard said almost defensively.   
“Well, you should share your toys, G,” she slinked over slightly to more lean on me than him, like some fucked up little sex triangle.  
“Oh, he’s not my toy, Poppy.”  
“Yeah, you’re right, he’s got you hooked not the other way around.”  
“Huh?” I frowned, my voice shaky and unsure, something that she seemingly ignored.  
“But I guess I don’t blame you, who wouldn’t fall in love with those fucking hazel moon eyes, right, G? Anyway, you boys can find me later, if I don’t get kicked out first,” she giggled carelessly as before I could protest, she backed away leaving me even more lost and no closer to an answer of what the fuck she was.  
“What did she mean, Gerard?” I fretted. “What did she mean by loving me?”  
“She’s a fucking maniac, Frank, she doesn’t know what she’s talking about,” Gerard shrugged as if our secret had not just been exposed by someone who barely knew me at all.   
“But-“  
“Baby, she’s always saying shit like that, why do you think Amber hated her so much?”  
“Because you two slept together,” I muttered bitterly, the jealousy finally hitting.  
“That was before I realised you liked me, I would never do that now! Besides, if I’m not fucking careful you’ll do exactly the same thing with her!”  
“I wouldn’t do that!” I protested.  
“Yeah, well she has her ways of making people fall in love with her.”  
“She’s not the only one,” I scowled at him and his perfect face. As if I could ever fall for somebody else when I was too busy worshipping the very ground he walked on.  
“Fuck me, I just love you so fucking much!” He sighed like a swooning teenage girl, and suddenly I was not quite so pissy anymore.

It appeared the interaction with Poppy had only catapulted me more onto Gerard, my emotions high and irate only heightened by the liquor I had been drinking. I found it hard to keep track of my friends around me, soon becoming separated from them and only really reuniting when a good song came on.

My rational mind had disappeared long before the DJ announced he was slowing down the music for a while, No. 1 Party Anthem by the Arctic Monkey’s blaring over the speaker as if it was meant just for me. I swayed a little too close to Gerard, the scent of his cologne drawing me in further with both lust and love as he whispered the lyrics effortlessly well into my ear, leaving goosebumps on my skin. I was so drawn to him that we were nose to nose, my toes aching with the way I had stood on them for too long just to be closer to him.  
Then all too suddenly the song abruptly finished and the slow flashing lights around us went black, the mumbles of the drunken souls around us being the only things to interrupt the eerie silence that had fallen on the room. All too quickly flashing lights filled the room so quickly I felt as if I was on drugs, Gerard’s face coming in flashes to me as some weird house music started playing around us. For a second in the disorienting lights, I thought I had seen Poppy’s face behind him, smirking almost evilly but I couldn’t be sure as the darkness made me lose the sight all too quickly. By the time the lights had flashed once again in that nanosecond, I felt Gerard being pushed into me in what seemed like an accident as I felt someone force my head closer to his, my nose once again pushed against his own as I became lost in the trance-like song and love of my life once again.  
“Just to have it at my will, just for pleasure and for thrill, I can’t seem to get enough, hurting from the lack of love,”  
And just like that, we were kissing.

I had lost my inhibitions instantly as his warm, vodka tasting lips locked onto my own and his tongue delved against mine with passion as if resisting each other for long had lead to a desperate embrace. I couldn’t explain it, I just knew I fucking needed him. I grabbed desperately at his shirt collar, aching to get closer and his hands ran all over my back and my ass as he seemed to need the same. I was glad the music was so loud for the mere fact no one could hear the embarrassingly loud moan I let out as I felt his crotch rock against my own, the vibrations falling off my tongue onto his making it our own private little secret.

I felt a force drag me backwards as my lips were left feeling cold and empty as the mysterious person dragged me away from my life support. I whined in frustration before I felt James shake my shoulders in what seemed like anger.  
“What the fuck are you doing, Frank?” James screamed in my face.  
“Kissing him,” I slurred, the flashing lights around us only tripping me out more.  
“Are you fucking stupid? Ross is here!”  
“ _Shit_ ,” I heard Gerard curse from behind me as the song trailed out and I was left with the realisation of our act. “Did he see?” He gnawed nervously on his lips and he glanced around quick and anxious at the spying eyes of one of Joe’s minions.  
“I don’t know! He went outside with that girl you were both speaking to earlier, but I haven’t seen him since!”  
We waited for a while, both of us expecting for the world to crash and burn around us, but it didn’t. I didn’t truly relax until I saw Ross come stalking towards us, Poppy hanging off his arm grinning maniacally at us. It couldn’t have been her behind us, I tried to reassure myself as they reappeared from the smoking area of the club, but it didn’t stop the doubtful thoughts from creeping in my mind. I expected Ross to expose our truths right there on the spot, but instead, he began whining about wanting a takeaway, the most fucking mundane and anticlimactic thing I could think of; not that I was complaining.

We didn’t leave the club for a few more hours despite me feeling unnerved and Ross being hungry but needless to say I forced myself to be away from Gerard until the taxi ride home, even if that did kill me. Things were almost unusually okay considering our slip up and I'd actually had one of the best nights of my life, but I did not trust it completely. After all, there’s always a calm before a storm. 


	54. you didn't mean to say I love you, I love you and I don't want to

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Theres very minor references to suicidal thoughts in this but as always, ill be happy to tell u where these are if you cant read them just leave me a comment x
> 
> The two songs for this chapter are very contrasting but I feel like they represent the story lol ;
> 
> This song is called I hate you and it's therapeutic when u hate someone;  
> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C1AYhumuoxM
> 
> Then the other one is I love you by Billie Eilish;  
> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fvj6PE3gN4o
> 
> ALSO in the UK when u pass your driving test you have a three year prohibition when you're only allowed to get 6 points instead of 12 before you get banned and theres a reference to this :)
> 
> Hope u enjoy!!

** G POV- **

 

My days passed quickly when I spent my time with Frank, only really coming for air from his lips to see my family for a quick five minutes before delving straight back into him all over again. I was shocked at how long I had been able to avoid Joe for, it had been four whole days without any sort of message or call which for him was odd. I would have been less shocked if there was to be a heatwave in the middle of December than the lack of contact from Joe, but I wasn’t about to question it. For the first time in years, I was happy without him and maybe, just maybe, I did not need him quite as much as I always thought that I did. 

 

By the fifth day, however, I was not shocked when I received a blunt text.

 

**\- Come to Shannon’s. Bring him.**

 

Although he was a man who messaged with few words, I knew what he wanted. What I did not understand though was his new need for me to bring Frank when we hung out at Shannon’s. Joe either ignored or tormented Frank, and that was only made worse by Shannon’s newfound infatuation with him when she was so cold to Joe himself. If somebody did not like Joe, he took it upon himself to act like he hated them first, even though I saw deep in his eyes that it made him uncomfortable when not everybody followed his words. He was so used to being on top all the time, that when he was not, he could not handle it. I think that’s why he had always disliked Frank, not only did he feel threatened that there was just that one person who had me under their thumb more than he ever could, but Frank as always defiant to his rules, refusing to conform into the box Joe wanted him in.

 

I couldn’t lie and say I was not nervous on the walk over to Shannon’s flat, but I still tried to hide it from Frank. It was most likely nothing, merely that Joe lacked the attention I always was so quick to give him, but I still did not like that I had to drag Frank along. If he didn’t come, I feared Joe would only get more obsessive on the idea, I just wanted to get bored with him already. Obviously, Frank put his foot down and dragged his fucking heels about coming with me but I had managed to beg him with the promise he could disappear with Shannon again. I was jealous, I wanted to hide in the kitchen away from the brutality of the living room, but I also knew that it was not possible for me to slip away quite so easily. I felt guilty for lying to Frank, I had no fucking clue if Shannon was going to be there or not, Joe’s blunt text was hardly informative, but it had to be done to save us both in the long run and although he could not understand that yet, he eventually would. Joe was like a protective dog, if a stranger got too close outside of his terms he would bite, and that bite was fucking deadly.

I could not deny the way I had dawdled to Shannon’s, Frank made no real effort to speed us up either meaning the 20-minute journey took 45 instead. The weirdly tranquil notifications on my phone freaked me out a little, he was expecting me, so it was unusual for me not to be hounded with messages asking why the fuck I was taking so long. Still, no matter how much I tried to delay it, we eventually got to the rundown gates of the apartment block. I shouldn’t have been so nervous to see my friends, but still, my finger hovered for just that little bit too long over the buzzer before I got the guts to press it. I needed to snap out of it, but something just did not feel right. The air surrounding us was cold, but my cheeks burnt hot with worry, the secret I was hiding all too prominent on my tongue. 

“Half an hour, G, and I’m out of here,” Frank grumbled picking at nail bed with his teeth. I hated seeing him like this, he was always the leader, and now that role fell on me I did not like it. For my whole life, I pushed him to do things first and I would simply follow, but being an adult wasn’t that simple and sometimes I needed to push my own anxiety down to lead the way for us. 

“Yes,” I agreed, my voice barely coming out as anything more than a whisper. At the end of the day, I had him by my side and together we could have taken on the world. I loved him more than I thought humanly possible, but I was just finally coming to terms with how not to hurt him because of it. 

 

It was Tom who answered the door, his usual bored expression looking a little bit more anxious than usual. He did not greet me like I expected, instead, he simply moved to the side to let me and Frank into the living room. I had been expecting to see all of my friends, but instead, there was no one.

“Through here,” Tom mumbled, not daring to meet my eyes. He lead us through to the kitchen as I felt him throw a panicked look in my direction. I felt guilty that I ignored it, but seeing the fear in his eyes would only make me weak, and I had never needed to be stronger than I did at that moment. Once we got to the kitchen, I was even more lost when it was just Joe and Ross sat in silence at the table, both of them staring at their hands instead of looking at each other.

“You took your time, G,” Joe snapped his gaze up to meet us, his grey lifeless eyes contrasting to the mock cheeriness in his voice. 

“Sorry, we were busy and-“ I tried to excuse, but he didn’t give a fuck about my lies. There was something else on his mind.

“Just take a seat,” He motioned down to the two empty wooden chairs like we were about to be put through a fucking job interview. “Tom, be a doll and leave for a second.”

“But Joe, it’s my girlfriends flat-“

“Tom, leave.” He said more forcefully this time, making Tom slink away back to the living room without any more protests. His voice was so calm that it scared me because I knew trouble was coming, just like when a lion had to slink over to it's prey to avoid it running away. I tried to look at Ross but he was intentionally ignoring me just like I had done to Frank, but I feared it was not because he cared about me too much. I had been quick to trust his kind expressions, but maybe I had been a fool. I had tried to reassure myself that Ross couldn’t have seen when me and Frank had fucked up the other day, besides he had no proof and I knew his friends would lie for us if it came down to that. Ross did not look like somebody who was sat in a position of power, however, instead, he looked more freaked out that me and Frank did.

“How are we all?” Joe asked almost humorously like we were at a fucking board meeting. “ _Well?_ ” He asked again when nobody dared to answer his obvious rhetorical question. “You guys seem to be quite chummy recently, so I’m sure you’re all doing well!”

“Delo-“ I tried to protest that Frank and Ross really weren’t that close and if he had dragged us out to talk about them playing soccer then he was being stupid, but as soon as I spoke, I knew it was futile. Joe stole my voice with the glare he shot me, and I could only silently beg Frank not to try and speak for me because he would just make it worse than it needed to be. Joe liked to make things dramatic, him catching Frank and Ross talking would lead to him acting like a wife finding a mistress’ phone number in their husband's phone.

“No! How the fuck do you think I feel when my best friend fucking lies to me, Gerard?” Joe snapped. “You told me that on Friday night you were busy with your family, I knew you were fucking lying so I checked your phone’s location. Tell me what the fuck I was supposed to think when I see my other closest friend is right in the same dive-club as you?”

“Delo,” Ross tried to rationalise, “I go there with my brother sometimes, it was just coincidence that-“

“Rossy,” Joe snorted like a maniac, “I thought you would say that so I took it upon myself to look at the club night photos that their shitty facebook page post after every event. I couldn’t see your brother anywhere and when I checked he was still on the other side of the fucking country!”

“Look, I’m sorry I-“ I began.

“No, Gerard! He’s a fucking psycho! You’re both allowed other friends!” Frank challenged him, not realising he was only making it worse for us. I could sense how angry he was, vibrations of frustration practically radiating off him at how timid me and Ross were both being, but he just did not get it. With Joe, it was easier to spit out apologies until he forgot, constantly reassuring him he was right until he left the matter alone. Frank didn’t have anything to lose from this, however, not like me and Ross did. Frank had friends and he did not need to follow Joe’s rules like we did, but I was still annoyed at him for putting us in that position.

“Well, Frankie,” he spat at him mockingly, “that’s not my biggest problem about this whole thing.”

“Huh?” He frowned at Joe.

“It took me a while to examine these photos because whoever shot them seemed to do it on a fucking potato, but there was just one little thing that caught my eye.”

“What?” I audibly gulped.

“Tell me what the **FUCK** this looks like!” He screamed at all three of us, throwing a blurry zoomed-in photo in my direction. The photo itself looked no clearer than as if you were looking at an image through water but I instantly knew what it was, the truth of the captured imaging sending my blood icy cold. The photo was not directly of me, no, but it clearly captured two people who I did not know smiling cheerily at that fucking club photographer that would not give in on asking us if we would take photos for their stupid Facebook page. I had been smart, well I thought I had been, by denying her constant requests to take a photo of our group meaning she had moved on to the people next to us. I thought it was for the best, but if I’d just taken that fucking photo then she wouldn’t have captured my stupid mistake in the background of the people she took a photo of next. I was barely in the photo but I knew my lips were undeniably on Frank’s, you could tell that much by the two dark-haired blurred people joint by their lips in the corner of the image. 

“That’s not me,” I tried to argue but my throat was weirdly dry with fear. I didn’t think in my whole 18 years of life I had felt fear like it, almost as if he had come into my brain and stolen all of my dark secrets. I knew that photo was of the two of us even though the grain of it almost made it impossible to make out what was happening. I thanked God that the pretentious indie bar insisted on shooting photos on some jacked-up 80s camera and not more professional ones all the other clubs insisted on using because then I would have left us nothing to hide behind. I knew that Joe knew that it was us, and Frank did too. I felt his body stiffen next to mine, almost sensing the bile rising through his throat with anxiety just like mine was doing. It was a fucking harrowing feeling realised we had gotten too sloppy and relaxed, and it was no one's fault but our own. Ross knew what we were both wearing that night, he knew the white and grey blur of our clothes, so he would inevitably know it was us. He was going to tell Joe that and our lives would be over. I wasn’t fucking ready to come out with this, in fact, I was so far in that God damn closet I thought I wanted to hide forever. Of course, it would have been nice to be open about my feelings, to not have to hide the way we sometimes linked our little fingers because we couldn’t hold hands and to just be happy together, but that wasn’t how life worked. Me and Frank were not meant to be anything more than a tragic love affair that could go no further than fucking, no matter how much we wanted it to be something else. I had got from day one that clinging on to him was not healthy for either of us, it was only going to make it harder to let him go. Ignoring my rational logic had only destroyed us in the worst kind of way. If I was ending things with Frank I wanted to do it on my own behalf, not because Joe was dragging us away from each other because wasn’t it always better to destroy yourself first so that no one else could hurt you? It was too late for that now though, Frank had wormed himself so deeply into my soul that I was not ready to let go just yet, but I had a feeling Joe was not going to give me a choice. 

“Don’t fucking lie to me, Gerard, you fucking faggot!” Joe was screaming by that point, his homophobic slurs spilling off his tongue like a venomous poison. 

“I’m not gay!” I tried to protest. I didn’t think it was a lie, it wasn’t like I had made a habit of kissing boys, I just wasn’t quite ready to understand what I was. 

“ **THEN WHY ARE YOU FUCKING KISSING HIM?** ” Joe was shouting louder than I had ever heard him before, his voice echoing like thunder and the spit firing from his lips like rain. I could not really find the words to describe my feelings, I was merely hollow. I felt as if I now was a fucking gazelle that had been pounced upon by a lion, it was futile to try and get away but I still pathetically tried. Joe had me locked in his jaws, and all that remained of my energy was a carcass. 

“I’m not, that’s not us,” my voice was tired and broken and Frank had seemingly lost himself. I had never seen the boy I was in love with be so weak, and it scared me that even he did not know what to do. He always had all the fucking answers but right now there was nothing.

“Bullshit, Gerard! You break up with Amber, you spend all your time with this loser, you disappear to a weirdo fucking club and this picture emerges! Don’t you dare and sit there and tell me I’m wrong!”

“Why the fuck do you even care if it is him?” Frank rose to his feet once he had found his voice. I knew he was scared, I could tell by the way he was gripping the table so hard that his knuckles were turning white just to stop his hands from trembling. 

“Because **MY** best friend is not a fucking fag. Gerard, I swear to God I will make your life a living misery, you’ll go back to be that fat fucking loser with no friends but I promise you it’ll be worse this time. Every fucking day you wake up you will regret being alive,” Joe warned with no hint of exaggeration. My biggest fear in life was going back to being that freak and I didn’t know if I could survive it a second time around. I knew Frank wouldn’t stick around if I was like that again, and I’d have no one. I’d ruined my own life with one stupid mistake because I couldn’t just wait two fucking seconds to kiss him. I visibly cringed when I saw Frank move forwards and push Joe so forcefully that he stumbled backwards. I knew he was trying to protect me but he wasn’t. He was just going to piss Joe off even more and my life would be even less worth living. Inevitably, Joe pushed his straight back but his stance did not change. Frank was standing his ground as if he was protecting his territory, his breath coming out of his nostrils so harshly and his eyes so mean and cold that I didn’t think I could look at him. This was not the Frank that I knew, but I was too fucking broken to protect him myself like I should have been doing. I had done this to him. I had turned my friend who hated violence into this angry force, the same guy who went out of his way to stop fights that did not even include him on the football field. Frank had punched me in the face once and the pain still echoed like a deafening noise despite the physical feeling of it fading months ago. I knew what it was like to have him turn on you, and I knew he did not do it lightly, but somehow I had managed to make him lose his fucking shit twice. I wasn’t good for Frank, I wasn’t good for anybody, not even Joe.

“Fucking stop!” Ross snapped, taking us all by surprise by getting to his feet and delving his way in-between Joe and Frank before their fight turned even more vicious. Ross was not a guy who often stood up for himself, and the fact he just had made me even more anxious with what he was going to say. I longed to be anywhere else but here waiting for Ross to expose my life. It was physically painful for me to resist closing my eyes and burying myself away from the situation, but all I could do was sit and watch. I felt as if I was being led to my execution, but I just couldn’t fight anymore. I braced myself for the truth to spill from Ross’ lips but his response only left me floating further into space. 

“Don’t speak to me like that!” Joe snarled at him.

“Look at the time stamp you dick head!” Ross pointed harshly to the red lettering that read 0100AM on the telling photograph. 

“What’s that supposed to mean?” Joe said being just as confused as I was.

“Gerard had left with Poppy at that time, he wasn’t even in the fucking club at that point!” As the lie left Ross’ lips me and Frank both looked at him. Although he did not meet our gaze, his eyes looked sincerely truthful even though all three of us knew that was not true. Poppy had gotten a taxi back to Ross’ house after we had all gone to get food after our night out, despite her offering to come back with me and Frank. He had drunkenly giggled at her but I hadn’t. I knew she had not been joking and despite connecting with her more than I did with almost everybody, I did not want her to touch Frank. I knew she teased me by dangling him in front of my face by being able to have him in a way I never could, but I would never let her close enough to him to have that power over me. 

“Poppy?” Joe frowned.

“Yeah,” Ross confirmed with such expertise that even I almost believed it.

“You had sex with Poppy last Friday?” Joe directed his glare straight back at me suddenly making me aware of just how visible I was. I could not find the words to fight my corner so I merely nodded weakly at him. I felt as if I was being dangled off a cliff and one wrong move would send me plummeting to my death, but I couldn’t do anything to stop fucking it up. I was confused as to why Ross was lying in the first place, throwing himself under the bus to drag me from its wheels.

“Well, let’s ring her then!” Joe said quickly, catching on to the conspiracy that surrounded him. 

 

Every ring of the dial tone whilst we waited for her to answer felt like a fresh stab wound delving in and out of my flesh with no mercy. That was nothing compared to the way my heart dropped, however, when I heard her melodic voice chime a confused hello at the other end of the phone. Rule number one of knowing Poppy was that you did not make expectations with her, if you ended up with her it was always her call and when you least expected it. One did not simply ring a girl like Poppy, and she fucking knew that so I could only dread to think what she would be thinking when Joe’s number flashed on her phone. I begged for her not to answer but I knew that would have just dragged the whole fiasco out like slow torture instead of a quick execution.

“Hey, babe!” Joe said in a fake cheery voice into his phone despite the thing being on fucking speaker just so that I would be faced with my own exposure. 

“What do you want, Delo?” I heard the frown in her voice.

“Just a quick question, I won’t keep you too long. You know last Friday, yeah?”

“Yes…”

“Well, may I just ask you who you went home and fucked that night?”

“Fuck off, Joe,” she snarled, “that’s none of your fucking business.”

“Oh, but it is darling. I just need to check.”

I heard her sigh heavily before answering.

“You know me and Gerard had sex last Friday because he would have inevitably told you about it, so why the fuck are you asking me?”

_What?_ I thought to myself. _What the actual fuck?_ Had I just been so drunk that I had forgotten sleeping with her or something? Her lie was so convincing that I had almost fell for it myself. I quickly shook that thought off because I knew it was me in that photo and even more importantly than that, I vividly remember going back with Frank because I had the drunken video of me singing happy birthday to him whilst he forced water down my throat to prove it. 

“Oh,” Joe mumbled in utter bewilderment.

“Is there anything else you want, Joe?” She shut him down quickly.

“Erh, no I-“

“Well, fucking do one then! Oh, wait!” She quickly added.

“What?”

“I assume Gerard is there, yeah?” How she knew things like that, I didn’t fucking know but she both scared and intrigued me all at the same time.

“Why do you give a fuck?” Joe snapped.

“Tell him to pass my number on to his pretty little friend with the hazel eyes,” I heard her giggle before the line went completely dead. 

“I fucking told you, Delo,” I laughed in a strained manner but it didn’t matter, Poppy had somehow made my lie tangible. He paused for a moment, the whole room falling silent and making me paranoid that even Tom would be able to hear the hammering of my nervous heart despite being in a completely different room. 

 

And then just like that, he began to laugh. It wasn’t a kind laugh that I had heard many times before when we had been talking about our sex lives or the intoxicated giggles caused by the LSD we had consumed, it was cruel and reminded me just how much Joe could single-handily ruin my fucking life. More out of panic than anything, I began to laugh too in the same vindictive way that he did, right in Frank’s face. I didn’t care how much I could see he was trembling out of utter rage because I was too fucking relieved. I knew he hated me at that moment, but I just did not give a fuck. When people got too close to me I got freaked out that they may become dependent and for a second, I hadn’t felt that with him, he had made me feel something stronger than human with his love and affection. The cruel reality of everything had slapped me around the face though making me plunge back down into mortality. I couldn’t have him depend on me, not now, not ever, it was only going to destroy the both of us. 

“As if I’ve genuinely just thought you would fuck around with _THAT_ ,” Joe mocked cruelly right in Frank’s face. I didn’t get his point, I knew I was biased but even a blind person could have seen that  Frank was a million times more attractive than Joe was, and I think he realised that. Joe fucking hated the way girls threw themselves at Frank where he had to work his ass off to get them to notice him, especially because Frank was absolutely blind to the way people he adored him. He was the captain of the football team, nice to people and possessed eyes that could fucking kill, but all that did was make him oddly modest. People fucked Joe for the power, people wanted to fuck Frank because he was special. Perhaps it was because he was a boy, maybe that’s why I wasn’t allowed to love him. The weird rivalry between Joe and Frank had always baffled me because it wasn’t exactly like me and James. James was in love with Frank and so was I, there was inevitably going to be tension there, but I was almost certain I lacked the double X chromosome that would have made me Joe’s type so it couldn’t have been like that. Frank always claimed that Joe had some weird control over me and he did not like to lose it, but I wasn’t quite so sure about that. Joe could replace me in a second, each person in his group begging to be as close to him as I was. Yes, Joe was thought more of me than the others, but fuck me, it meant he came down on me the hardest. 

“Exactly, why would I fuck that virgin when I could have Poppy, if you know what I mean,” I sniggered cruelly trying to ignore the way Frank had acted as if I had just stabbed him.

 

We sat there for another painful 20 minutes, Joe being quick to move the conversation away from his ‘mistake’. He did not apologise, but he rarely did, instead, he just continued to brag about himself. I was always happy for Joe to take the attention away from me, he craved it whereas I was always quick to run from it. Living in Joe’s shadow was an easy life for me, he got the main glory and I could stay relevant but still under the radar, so I didn’t give a shit what Frank said, Joe was good to me. 

“I’m going,” Frank snapped rudely after being ignored for the whole time since Tom came back into the room. Joe refused to tell Tom what we had been talking about, seemingly embarrassed about the way he had lost his shit whilst quickly being proved wrong. Well, what he thought was wrong at least. It had all gotten too close to comfort, the reality of my dangerous affair suddenly feeling more terrifying than thrilling. I thought it had been nice to feel things for a while, to not be numb just for a little bit, but it fucking sucked. The sooner I got back to being the heartless prick I had grown to become, the better.

“Well, I’m not ready to go yet,” I lied so well that I didn’t think even he could tell I wanted nothing more than to crawl into my bed and hide from the world. I had to make it seem like I wanted to be with Joe because I didn’t want him to see just how unnerved I had truly become.

“Fine,” he responded incredibly bluntly. “I’ll go home on my own.”

“Nah, come on I need to walk home anyway,” Ross said. I was glad Joe was way too occupied with showing me the revealing photos that Hannah had made the mistake of sending him to notice that Ross and Frank were planning to leave together. With me, Joe really had no choice about my friendship with Frank because it had existed for too long and I had always had the excuse of my mom being mad if we ever fell out, but with Ross, he had no real good reason to be hanging around with his main rival. I didn’t know why, but the thought of Ross leaving with him without me there made me bitter. It wasn’t like I thought they were just going to start fucking on the park bench or anything like that, but he was mine to comfort. I didn’t understand myself, I wanted nothing more than to run far away from Frank because I did not trust myself not to ruin our lives with how dependent he was becoming on me, but I also did not want Ross to be the one to pick up the pieces that I couldn’t. I was pretty certain Ross wasn’t gay, but it was deeper than that. If Frank was upset I wanted to be the one to hold him, but I also knew I was going to be the one to hurt him in the first place if I didn’t fucking control myself. 

“No, I’m coming,” I rose to my feet, smirking slightly at Joe to try and suggest to him that I was back and he needn’t worry about me not being part of his fucking dream team anymore. If this was a tug of war and I was the rope, I knew Joe was winning, but that much was predictable. He knew exactly how to remind me that commitment just wasn’t something I could emotionally handle, especially with somebody I could never have. 

“ _Boo_! G man, you gotta make sure you come see me tomorrow!” Joe said, completely blocking Ross from the conversation now he had apparently made his bed with Frank.

“Yeah, of course, bro!” I bumped his fist.

“Good boy! Now, try not to fuck your little friend on the way home,” he smirked right back at me, flashing his nicotine-stained teeth in my direction like little razors.

 

——-

 

“What the _fuck?_ ” Frank hissed in my ears as we made out way down the cold metal staircase to exit the complex. The ceiling lights left a disgusting yellow tinge to the air around us, the darkness from outside only making it harsher. I didn’t want to be in that building anymore, in fact, I wanted to be nowhere at all. Sometimes I wished I could take a break from my own head where I merely did not exist without having to have the aid of the drugs to make me feel like that, but I think that was called death or at the very least a coma. I contemplated whether the remainder of the stairs we had left were enough of a jump enough to land me right into that coma, but I deliberated too long and missed my God damn chance.

“We need to talk,” Ross mumbled awkwardly once we were onto the bitterly cold street, checking over his shoulder several times before he continued. “About what happened.”

“What about it?” I froze all over again. I had been so quick to assume that this torture was over, but I was fucking wrong, I just feared this time I was too mentally exhausted to fight it.

“I saw you, Gerard.” He said sharply as if his very words were a sharpened tip of a knife.

“Saw what?”

“I saw you kissing him.”

“Kissing who?” I said dumbly as if they very person he was referring to was not stood right next to me. I once again felt Frank stiffen next to me as if he was a defensive dog getting ready to fight.

“You kissed Frank.” He said _oh so matter of factly_ that it scared me.

“You’re fucking mental,” I tried to shake him off and carry on walking. I had not even realised that I had completely halted, but apparently, we all had.

“Don’t treat me like an idiot, Gerard! Everyone always treats me like a naive fucking child, and I’m not! I knew from day fucking one who you were talking about, it’s fucking obvious you have feelings for him! I knew before you fucking did!” Ross had never spoken to anyone like that, let alone me. I liked to think of myself as second in command because in Joe’s absence they often looked at me for what to do. He wasn’t quite so shy and respectful anymore though, each one of his home truths shocking me further into my  vile, dark mind.

“Are you alright, Rossy?” I attempted to laugh off but we all knew my voice was way too high to be considered calm.

“No, Gerard! Someones got to tell you this before you fucking ruin your life! You fuck with girls, drugs and shit like that to numb the fact you’re in love with him. You always fascinate yourself with people who are unobtainable so you never have to face the rejection that you feel like you two can’t be together!”

“You don’t have a fucking clue what you’re talking about,” I scowled at him. I had a special skill of telling people a little about me and making them think they knew a lot, but it appeared Ross had delved beneath the surface of my words and over analysed them just like those fucking melancholy lyrics he loved so much.

“You think I don’t get what you’re feeling? I told you about Sophie! He told me I couldn’t be with her too, and look what fucking happened, Gerard! _Gerard!_ I’m fucking talking to you, stop walking away!”

“Leave him, he’s being a fucking tosser,” I heard Frank say from behind me and just like that, I snapped.

“You think you fucking know me Frank, and you fucking don’t!”

“Yes, I do!” He argued straight back at me. “You’re being an absolute victim once again, but you’re the one who’s fucked me over!”

“How have I fucked you over, you fucking special, entitled, little princess?” I sneered.

“You had sex with Poppy when you told me you weren’t going to do that anymore!” I fully expected him to scream at me, but his voice was small and wobbled with emotion just like his bottom lip. I rarely saw Frank cry, and knowing I had nearly caused him to do so almost made me fall to my knees and beg for his forgiveness. I was too angry at him though, Ross was listening to him being a little bitch about everything as if he hadn’t just destroyed my life with those small little truths.

“I didn’t have sex with her, you fucking idiot!” 

“But-“ he mumbled, swallowing hard before any tears could escape from his moon-sized eyes.

“We saw you kissing, but that doesn’t fucking matter because we’d already formulated the lie of you two sleeping together way before.” Ross answered for me.

“When?” I scowled.

“So you guys were eye-fucking that whole night! I already knew you meant him when you said you were in love with somebody, Gerard, and he confirmed it to me when he told me he was in some fucked up unrequited love scenario too! I saw you try to kiss him when you were drunk too! Poppy fucking told me she thought the same, and there you go, we walk back inside to see you two getting off as if you had nothing to hide! That’s the thing, G, I fucked up with Soph, I know I did, but this is my chance to get things right. You don’t have to hide this from me because I’m always going to lie to him as long as you want me to, you mean too much to me to not want to try for you both.”

“Like I said, you know nothing,” I scoffed at him.

“I do, and you know that I do.”

“A drunken kiss means nothing, Ross! You should know that, you went home with Poppy but that doesn’t make you bound for life now, does it?”

“I didn’t go home with her! I took her home because she got separated from her friends when we were coming up with this cover story for YOU. I didn’t want her getting a taxi by herself, but I certainly did not sleep with her.”

“Why not?”

“Because she isn’t Sophie! So fucking take it from me, stop acting like this!”

“I’m grateful for what you did,” I mumbled before turning away. I think I turned around so that he could not see the way my face screamed fear, the threatening tears in my eyes just one step closer to exposing my weakness. I knew Ross was trying to identify himself and Sophie with this situation, so I did not blame him for becoming so attached to it, but it was not the same. Joe might not have liked the idea of Sophie, but at least it was not forbidden like this. I felt relief that he had just sworn to keep my secret, but that did not automatically banish my anxiety, and like I’d said, I was just too exhausted to care anymore. I wanted to go home and scream, cry and snort cocaine until I could no longer feel anything at all; life was easier that way.

 

Although we spent the rest of the walk-in silence, me always a few steps in front, I felt there were a million words in our thoughts to fill the empty air. Once we came to the alleyway that Ross was to take and leave us, I suddenly did not want him to go. I wanted for him to sit there and reassure me all night he was not going to expose my stupidity, but I didn’t even think that would have been enough.

“Gerard, I mean it, you can trust me with your life.”

I bit my lip hard before turning around to meet Ross’ words head-on like a fucking car collision but his sincere eyes only made me feel more that I did not want to. I didn’t want to fucking feel anything anymore, not love, not hate, not fucking anything.

“Thank you,” I managed to squeak out.

“Well, I guess I’ll see you guys around, but you know I’m here if you want to talk about it.” 

I did not want to talk about it, I wanted to run.

“See you, Ross,” Frank answered for us. He hadn’t spoken in quite a while, so his voice almost took me by surprise. I longed to love him but I also wanted to never see him again, only reiterating to me that feelings were no good to anybody.

“Bye, man. Let me know if you wanna play some football!”

Fucking football. How could anybody talk about something as mundane as soccer in a crisis like this?

“Sure, I’ll text you,” Frank confirmed before Ross slipped off down the alleyway towards his side of town.

 

Being alone with Frank scared the shit out of me and that was only made worse by the way he was not speaking. I didn’t necessarily want him to talk, I just didn’t know where to go from that moment and ached for him to take the lead like he had so many times before. No words were spoken until we walked straight up the path to my house and the gleam of the shiny black paintwork caught my eye spitting a solution right in front of my face.

“I need to go on a drive,” I sighed heavily, fingering the silver button on my car keys in my pocket so that the cool metal part flicked against my finger to keep me on this earthly plane just that little while longer until I could lock myself and my dark thoughts far away.

"Okay," he agreed with apparent reluctancy in his voice.

 

The car journey to his house was not any better than our walk because he had grabbed my phone to play music. I always knew he tried to indirect me with the songs he played in my car, but this was different. He was angry, no, he was fucking furious, I could tell that much from the song he was playing.

 

_ “You are nothing to me, _

_ You’re a useless fucking cunt, you are nothing to me, _

_ I don't ever wanna feel like anything I do _

_  Ever had a fucking resonance or meant a thing to you) _

_ I fucking hate you _

_ Yeah, I hate you, and I wish you would die _

_  It makes me violently angry when I see you alive _

_ You're a fucking mistake, you're an embarrassment, mate _

_ You think you're funny and you're clever But you're just a disgrace.”  _ It blared.

 

The song was only the surface of his anger, I knew that.

 

“Why the fuck are you even friends with him?” He asked randomly, battling with the volume of the music he had set but making no attempt to turn it down.

“Leave it out, Frank,” I sighed.

“No! I want you to tell me what the fuck is going on!”

“Nothings going on. I didn’t sleep with Poppy, Joe doesn’t know about us but I guess Ross does,” I shrugged, despite feeling anything but casual.

“That isn’t nothing, Gerard, that’s quite a big something!” 

“You heard Ross, he said he wasn’t going to tell anyone.”

“I don’t get why though?” He frowned, “Who the fuck is Sophie?”

“His ex.”

“I didn’t know he had an ex!”

“Me neither, no one but Joe did.”

“And let me guess, Joe split them up,” Frank rolled his eyes heavily as if he even had a fucking clue on the depth of what he was talking about.

“No, that was Ross’ fault, he’s the one that cheated on her.”

“Oh, so you’re telling me Joe had nothing to do with it?” He remarked rather snidely knowing full well he was correct.

“Yeah, but at the end of the day, people don’t do things they don’t want to,” I sighed.

“So you did wanna fuck Amber all that time you were meant to be with me?”

“Christ, will you just fucking get over it already! I said I was sorry, I don’t know what else I can possibly do!”

“Stop seeing Joe,” He replied so bluntly and cooly that it left a chill in the air despite the car's heating being on high.

“You know I can’t do that,” I gripped the steering wheel even tighter, my knuckles turning as white as the frost outside. “I will do anything for you, but I can’t do that.”

“If you loved me you would.”

“And if you loved me, you wouldn’t ask me to do that!”

“We’re going to end up getting hurt, G,” his voice softened, “and I feel like you have to make your choice now before it escalates.”

“Why are you asking me to choose? I’m not fucking sat here asking you to stop seeing James now, am I?”

“James has never coercively controlled me to the point I’m fucking terrified of being true to myself.”

What he said was not wrong, but I felt he could not be picky on my friends when one of his was in love with him. 

“I just need to think, Frank,” I mumbled taking the turning to his street.

“Oh, I,” he frowned as I pulled up outside of his house. “I didn’t realise you meant you wanted to drive alone.”

“I think it would be best,” I looked straight ahead to an amber street light to avoid seeing the hurt in his face. Frank’s eyes were my weakness, especially when he was sad.

“I don’t mind talking about this, we can always go and sit in the car park and-“

“No, I want to be alone.” Every second he was in the car was just killing me further, why couldn’t he see that?

“But-“

“Frank! Don’t worry, Poppy is lying for us, Ross is lying for us, just don’t sweat your pretty little head about it,” my voice squeaked as I was unsure if I even believed what I was saying myself. 

“Okay, well you know if you need me or you’re getting bad again then I’ll drop everything, alright?”

“Thank you.”

“Erm, well, I love you,” he let his words seep into the air like toxic radiation.

“I know you do,” I mumbled, even though I definitely wasn’t sure if he did. It wasn’t like I didn’t love him, I just didn’t know how to say it. Those very three simple fucking words suddenly felt as if I was trying to talk in mandarin with no knowledge on the language with my tongue being cut off, it was just impossible. 

“Okay, well maybe I’ll see you later.”

“ _Mmmhmm_ ,” I simply hummed my response. My foot was already pressed on my acceleration ready to speed off into the night to the point I could hear the soft, hummed revs of my engine signalling our goodbye just like the old bell at our old school signalled the end of our lunch break.

I felt him turn my head to face him, my eyes quickly to divert to my gear stick to avoid his killer gaze. He only made it more painful, however, when he tried to kiss me. I didn’t even comprehend the move before instinctively turning my head so his lips landed awkwardly on the corner on my mouth.

“Gerard?” He asked, his broken voice like the feeling of standing on shattered glass. My voice got caught in my throat, words once again failing me by becoming impossible. No fucking words seemed worthy though, I just needed to fucking drive. 

“Go fuck yourself,” he snapped harshly at me before quickly exiting my car. Unlike usual, he made no attempts to turn around and wave me off like he normally did when I dropped him home. There was no torn away kisses, no one last hugs and no one million I love you’s, just the end of that fucking furious song he had been playing ringing loud and true in my car to me all by my fucking self.

_ “I hate you, and I wish you would die.” _

 

——-

 

I drove to our carpark at a speed so fast I knew it was stupid. I wasn’t even off my three-year driving probation yet so being caught doing 120MPH on a 50mph road was not my smartest of decisions. I didn’t care though, I didn’t give a fuck if I got caught or even if I crashed and died. I didn’t though, I just pulled into the circular carpark, my car coming to a screeching halt as I slammed the hand break on only millimetres before I crashed through and broke down the old stone wall and fell right into that freezing cold reservoir bellow me. Maybe that would have been a better option, but I knew a less painful oblivion. I opened the compartment hidden in my car’s armrest and did not have to search very hard to find what I was looking for. I had sat in this very spot and contemplated the little bag so fucking many times before that I knew off by heart exactly what corner it was hiding in, never giving in before but tonight was different. I did not sit there threading the small plastic thing through my hands like usual, no, I ripped it open and greedily poured the white powder on to my bunched up fist and snorted it so harshly, it was almost like I was trying to fight for breath. The high had not even hit me yet, but just knowing it was coming was enough to make me finally relax.

 

I cut my engine just to get the fucking eery song still playing from the playlist Frank had made off, but not before the words rang contrastingly out to the other one he had been playing.

_“You didn’t mean to say I love you, I love you, but I don’t want to._ ”

 

I tried to block the airy voice out my head despite the car being long switched off as I crawled into the backseat to indulge in my self-destruction. My head was becoming fuzzier and I felt the disconnect that I had been secretly craving for days. The drugs were taking away from just how cold I was, and I was glad for that. I wasn’t about to switch my car engine on and risking any more songs that would make me think back to those heartbroken brown eyes that had cruelly turned away from me only moments before.


	55. God knows I loved, God knows I lied, God knows I lost

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Erm so
> 
> I'll put a smut warning here (// in the text)
> 
> I'm bad at writing sex scenes I'm sorry hahahaha but I just put queen Lana on to get me through it hence the song for this chapter (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sxaq2Hn3U_k)
> 
> Also this is the song in the car just bcos it's a mood (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kM0mjukDGRw)

**F POV-**

The more Gerard ignored me, the more I craved him. He was acting like what happened with Joe had only affected him, but at the end of the day, I was right there in that kitchen with him waiting on the edge of my chair for us to be exposed. I thought that when he said he’d wanted to drive by himself it would have only lasted an hour at most, but I’d eventually just fallen asleep waiting for him to text me that he was outside. The worst thing was, we hadn’t even fought, I’d just felt him drift off like a little kid letting go of their balloon. If I let him float too far, I knew he would become out of reach and that thought was enough to make me swallow my pride and anger. I didn’t blame him for not kissing me back, not really, he was freaked out just like I was, we just had different ways of coping with it.

 

By the time the day before Christmas Eve had hit, I’d had enough of waiting for him to message me first. Sometimes with Gerard, you needed to set him back on the right tracks before he could find his way again. Don’t get me wrong, we had texted the odd pleasantry like mentioning that Home Alone was on the TV, but it just felt different for some reason. I had the message typed out on my phone for the longest time before I dared to press send because I was scared he would reject me. One thing about Gerard I had recently learnt though was that he was never going to be the one to pull himself out of his slump, and simply offering a hand could be like sharing the weight of the world to him. I scrunched my eyes and pressed the green send button, quickly tossing my phone to the side of me as if something so simple could get somebody so complex off of my mind. 

**\- What are you doing?**

 

The text was blunt and straight to the point, but he would know what I meant. I was a little shocked when he replied straight away.

 

**\- I’m at the gym.**

 

I contemplated my reply for what felt like a long time, wondering how to go about asking him to see him. I knew it was possessive and weird, but I just felt as if I needed him. I needn’t have even sweated about it though, because he double text me.

 

**\- I’ll be home in 30 mins if u wanna come x**

 

I wished I had the will power to act cool and almost ignore him, but the fact is, I craved him so desperately that I could do nothing else but reply to him straight away without any hesitation. It was the first time in days that he’d actually asked me to come over, and I had begun to think that he did not want me there. I knew Joe had scared him, so I couldn’t exactly blame him for being distant, but I did mean it about him having to make a choice. I didn’t want to force him into an ultimatum, but until he was rid of Joe, he would never be free. Yes, I was still a sucker for him but he’d also taught me in the past few months to love myself enough to walk away. I wouldn’t do it straight away, I wasn’t quite ready, but I couldn’t stand being on this roller coaster for much longer. I had motion sickness, and his ups and downs had made the nausea tiring. I had come to this realisation when I had thought he had slept with Poppy on the night of my birthday, the very thought of it almost making me vomit with the way he’d crawled right back into my bed. I had to believe that it didn’t happen though, it was fucking impossible because he had not left my side that night, but it still made me think of their history. I knew Gerard did not owe me anything before this whole affair started, but it still made my skin crawl slightly thinking of him with another. I sometimes fanaticised what it would have been like to have the upper hand in all of this, to hurt him like he had hurt me by accepting Poppy’s offer, but I never could bring myself to cause pain to the already broken green eyes he possessed. I fucking wished I had known Poppy before truly falling in love with Gerard, maybe then she would have taught me how to be stronger, but all she could be to me now was a _what-if_. Some days I got so angry about all he had put me through that I wanted nothing more than to hurt him, but seconds later I’d just want to wrap him up in cotton wool and protect him forever. That’s why I felt we needed more stability if we were to even continue this, I was too exhausted to wonder where I stood any longer.

 

I didn’t intend to fall straight in his arms when I got there, the last words I had said to him resonating in my head.

_“Go fuck yourself, Gerard,”_ I had snapped at him; meaning every single word of it. I had expected it to hurt him, but he looked at me with such a blank expression that night I had seriously considered calling Poppy. Instead, I face timed Nathan and had a rant about how much I hated Joe instead. I liked talking to Nathan about my issues with Gerard’s friends because he was closer than them to anyone I knew without fully being under their spell. I knew if I had rang any of my other friends, they would not have rationalised Gerard’s behaviour and I didn’t need any more of a reason to want to hurt him. No, instead Nathan reminded me of the social trauma Gerard had endured in our youth and how good Joe was at making people forget about it. That was the thing about Joe, Nathan told me, when he wanted to make you feel special he could make you feel like a rare fucking gem, but just as easily he could take it all away. Nathan had gone out with them the next day, including Gerard, and apparently, the incident was not even brought up. The only thing that was mentioned was Poppy, but I was almost certain that was just a facade to hide the fact he had actually left with me that night. As far as I was aware, Joe wanted to forget his ‘ _mistake_ ’ just as much as I wanted to forget about the guy’s existence. 

No, I fully intended on him asking what the fuck this was. I’d had enough of playing games, and if there was no label then what the fuck was the point? I wasn’t expecting him to broadcast whatever we decided to be to everyone straight away, but at least me knowing would give me peace of mind. I needed that more than ever, the walk to his house almost being unbearable because I did not know how he would react to my question. The term boyfriend fell weird when it fell on my ears because he had been my best friend for so long, plus, I wasn’t even fully sure on what my sexuality was. I liked to think I would have had the balls to have sex with a girl like Poppy if things were different, but I wasn’t quite so sure. Still, if he rejected me, I guessed I could always find out. I didn’t like to be optimistic when Gerard was concerned, but he _had_ said he loved me, he _had_ been spending every moment that he possibly could have done with me and he _had_ seemed to genuinely care about me, so I maybe allowed myself to daydream about him asking me to be with him for just a second too long. Yes, the label of boyfriend was odd, but fuck, it was also exciting. 

I let myself into his house, the only other person I knew would be there would be Mikey, and he was so obsessed with his fucking XBOX I doubted I would see him at all. My suspicions were right because the whole middle floor of the house was empty, almost too eery with just the sound of Gerard’s pounding bass music from the basement where I knew he would be expecting me. I did not get how it was possible to have known someone for so long and still feel furious fucking butterflies every time I went near him. I wasn’t too hard on myself at that moment though, I knew I was going to have to ask an awkward question that was either going to break me completely or fulfil all of my expectations. 

“Hey,” he greeted me as usual as I creaked open his door. How he looked took me back a little. I was used to thinking he was so beautiful that sometimes it fucking choked me, but there were certain times that made him look dangerous and for some reason, it drove me fucking crazy. He had not even showered yet from the gym and had apparently not even ended his work out yet as he was lifting weights.

“I thought you had just been to the gym?” I frowned at him even though I wanted nothing more than to fucking engulf him. He was wearing an extremely tight fitting grey top and tracksuit bottoms because according to Jesse, it made him sweat more and therefore lose more weight, but fuck, it made him look hot. Sweat to me had never been attractive, in fact, growing up with gross, sweaty football players had made me never see the whole gym body attraction. I guessed Gerard just pulled it off a little differently to me though like he fucking did everything else. His hair was growing out again, just how I liked it, but it was now plastered to his forehead as his swollen muscles from his workout were pressing against the tight fabric of his shirt. Gerard was not obviously muscly like his friend Jesse, but he was more proportionate. I had traced the curves of his biceps many times when we had been just lying together, never quite getting enough of them despite them being not all that different to my own.

“I have,” he panted heavily as he curled his arm up towards his chest, obviously in pain with the action but not quite being enough to stop. “I just don’t like training my arms with Jesse.”

“Why not?” I probed further. As far as I was aware, he had been going to the gym with Jesse for well over a year now but I had never caught him working out when he had gotten home before now. To me it was fucking weird, why would you not just get your whole workout done in one rather than letting your muscles relax to work them up again? I knew that was going to make him more prone to strains and tears, but I thought I would save him the patronising speech Grimshaw had given me a million times before.

“Have you seen the guy, Frank?” Gerard tutted as if it was fucking obvious and I was just a clown for missing it.

“Erm, yes,” I responded in confusion. Of course I had the displeasure of seeing Jesse, even though I fucking wished I hadn’t.

“Okay, well you’ll understand he’s twice the size of me, and it’s embarrassing to be lifting these shit weights next to him!” He snapped self-consciously as if I gave a shit about how many KGs he could press.

“You shouldn’t compare yourself to Jesse,” I said matter of factly, “he obviously isn’t naturally like that.”

“What do you mean?”

“Okay, I play soccer endlessly right, so you can see by my legs the natural muscle from running. Tell me how the fuck Jesse works out his legs twice a week and makes all my team’s look like twigs? He’s obviously using steroids or some shit-“

“He isn’t!” Gerard said defensively, never liking to admit he was taking gym advice from a fucking moron. 

“Yeah, he is! He grew that muscle in like 6 months AND his hair’s got thinner! That’s not even mentioning his mood swings,” I rolled my eyes spitting off facts of steroid abuse Grimshaw had drilled into us to avoid us turning to them. Jesse was usually a seemingly okay person, but according to Gerard, he could display aggression quickly. Apparently, he had scared his ex-girlfriend so much after he had caught her kissing some other guy that she had threatened to call the police. Her father went around to see Jesse’s and everything was pushed under the rug to the point I don’t even think Gerard knew what fully happened between them. Still, he was quick to take advice from someone who knew as much about nutrition as an obese fucking rat. I was pretty sure that was where Gerard had got it in his head that only eating chicken and rice was somehow enough to get all the nutrition he needed, and maybe that’s why I was suddenly outing him and his fake gains.

“You need to be careful when you run your mouth, Frank. It gets you into trouble,” he mumbled as he finally put the fucking weights down. I knew I had won the argument, but his stubbornness meant he would never admit it. 

“Anyway, I need to ask you something,” I stated clearly, the adrenaline from proving I knew more than him about something clearly making me cockier than it should have done. It wasn’t the best start, but I figured it was better to ask him before we bickered any further.

“Can it wait?” He groaned. “I need to shower!”

“Not really,” I sighed knowing full well I would have backed off if he left me to bask in the reality of my question any longer.

“Fine,” he reluctantly agreed, “but you’re asking me when I’m showering, because I feel disgusting.”

As he walked towards the bathroom attached to his room, I sat there blinking like a fucking idiot unsure of what he meant.

“Well, are you coming or not?” He turned back once he had reached the bathroom door and once again spoke to me as if I’d missed something obvious. I dumbly got to my feet, barely feeling them as all the blood furiously rushed to my head making me both dizzy and uncoordinated. Once I was in the bathroom with him, he careless kicked the door closed with his foot despite there being no chance of anybody else coming in, trapping me in the stark white room. I felt my breath catch in my throat as I was unsure where to look, my eyes choosing to focus on one specific tile on the floor as appose to him stripping his clothes off right in front of my eyes.

Things hadn’t changed that much, I thought to myself facetiously as he did not hesitate to take off his boxer shorts and stand in front of me naked without hesitation.

“What are you staring at?” He smirked at me as he caught my eyes drift upwards from my chosen tile. _Damn_.

“You,” I admitted. I thought it had been hard not to give in on my pact to not delve straight into him when he was fully clothed, but that only got harder once he was naked and within touching distance of me. I could see his taut muscles bulge against his skin from where he had been training them, and I ached to drag my teeth across them and down his slender yet strong frame. I never really took the lead when we fucked, and that wasn’t about to start, but it didn’t mean I didn’t think about knocking him right off his smug feet.

“ _Ew_ , how gross,” he joked, but I did not laugh. “What’s up with you any way _Mr Serious_?” He asked, climbing into the shower whilst I stood awkwardly at its side with only the noise of the falling water to distract from my pounding heart. I didn’t know if it was the emerging steam from his shower or the mere fact I was fucking terrified, but I could not focus my thoughts. All I could think about was the rejection, but I feared if I did not say something now, I was never going to and I would be strung along for the rest of my miserable life.

“I need to ask you something,” I said, my lack of confidence coming through with the way I audibly gulped afterwards.

“What do you wanna ask me, shorty?” He called out, not really listening nor seeming to care. “You’re not still beat up about Joe, are you? I’ve seen him lots since then and he’s not even bought it up! I think Poppy and Ross have fully got our back, yano? So I don’t think you should worry and-“

“Gerard, what are we?” I blurted out, blood rushing to my cheeks to give away how intimidated I was by merely asking that. I should not have had to feel like I was atoning for wanting clarification on our status, but for some reason, I sure sounded like I was.

“We’re best friends frank,” he said back apathetically as if it was that fucking simple.

“No, you know what I mean,” I sighed in frustration.

It only worried me further when I was met with silence, my fantasy of him confessing his undying love for me getting further and further from reality. It was only when he poked his head from around the glass door of his shower, the steam from the heated water no longer cloaking him and making him ambiguous and faceless. I expected anger, joy, anything but the confusion that masked his face. The water dripping from his eyelashes making him doe eyed was becoming increasingly irresistible, but I felt too empty and awkward to move. His vibrant green eyes had me rooted to the spot I was stood in, my head crackling and fizzing like burning wood as I become disassociated with my surroundings. Gerard had told me that sometimes when he was really bad, he felt like he was in a dream and nothing around him was real, and I had been too selfish to realise just how scary that was until it affected me too. I willed myself to walk away, but my brain and body felt disconnected, my common sense floating high above me whilst my body stayed under his scrutinising stare. I thought I would be stuck there forever, that was until he did something I was not expecting. 

He splashed me.

I had just asked the guy what our nameless relationship was, and he had the audacity to flick water right into my unsuspecting face and fucking giggle about it.

“Oh, don’t be so miserable, bug,” he laughed again, only fuelling himself further by repeating his actions. As I felt the luke-warm water droplets land on my face, I felt a little revived, but I did not feel like joining in the laughter.

“Gerard!” I fumed. I meant the fact he had not answered my question, but he thought I had meant that he had gotten my shirt wet which only lead him to do it again, this time completely drenching me.

“Guess you’ll have to take it off now,” he shrugged. I felt myself comply with his wishes, completely extenuating his actions and letting him once away get away with it, just because of how tempting he was.

“You can come in, yano,” he toyed, hiding half of himself behind the steamed-up glass door, flickering his eyes down to meet my parted mouth and bare chest. My feet, although still numb, stumbled forwards towards him like he was a siren, my inhibitions becoming completely lost down the drain just like the expelled water from his body.

“Erm, bug, you might need to take your clothes off first,” he giggled again at my utter stupidity.

“Oh, erh, yeah,” I cringed as I become all too aware of the deafening sound that my zipper made as I dragged it down to drag my sodden jeans off. With them, I accidentally pulled at my underwear too, but I was almost glad of that because it made the scariest step already half completed. It did not help with the way he was gazing down at me like he was truly in love with me, his eyes so intrusive as they met my own, I felt as if they blinked just for me. I eventually kicked off my jeans, underwear and socks all of the way until there were no barriers left to hide behind. I was far from the virgin I had been weeks ago, but sometimes he could make me feel exactly like that again.

“What are you staring at?” I mimicked his own question from earlier with the attempts of taking ownership, but only achieving showing him just how anxious I actually was with how heavy and uncertain my voice was. It wasn’t like I didn’t want to be naked in a shower with him, of course I fucking wanted that, but he was being so cryptic, so opaque I could not gauge if he actually wanted this or he was merely showing that he was in control. 

“You,” he held his hand out as I cautiously grabbed it and climbed into the hot shower, “I really fucking missed you, Frankie.”

“You didn’t make any effort to see me.”

“Because I needed time,” he nuzzled his nose against my own, my stomach flipping as he backed me towards the wall of the now enclosed shower. “I had to come to terms with stuff.”

“With what?” I dared to ask, my voice hitching as I felt the water dribble from his hair on to my almost trembling lip.

“That we’re friends.”

“Friends?” I squeaked, my heart racing so much it could have powered a million cities with electricity.

//

“We’re friends…” he mumbled, “who sometimes do this,” he cautiously inched forward until his lips landed on my own. They were soft at first, the impact of his statement breaking my heart but the result of his actions making it impossible to break us apart. He opened his mouth deeply, delving his tongue against my own so slowly that I could taste the water from the stream above us. I should have left him, I had clearly got my answer, but the way he snaked his hand up to catch my throat both softly yet a little violently to pin me further against the cool, tiled wall sent me into a frenzy. His warm finger curled around my neck, the tips digging softly into my exposed skin. He must have felt the way I gulped again his hand, but it only made him kiss me harder. I was pinned against the wall, my own hands splayed against the wet background as I dug my nails into the grout to try and stop my mind from spinning. I felt that if he was not holding me up by my throat, his other arm placed on the wall behind us to steady us both, my knees would have been so weak that I would have fallen over. His kiss was warm and wet, almost too intimate for me to handle, but it was also angry despite how desperately slow it was. He caught my top lip between his own as he pulled back from me to simply just look. His hand was still wrapped around my throat, but it was not unpleasant, instead, it made looking at him almost unbearable with the intensity his beauty radiated which was only magnified by the water making him glisten.

“I can stop,” he sighed almost above a husky whisper, “if you want me to.”

“N-no,” I stumbled out, my words being no stronger than my resistance for him.

“Are you sure,” he uttered darkly, his voice only inciting me further. That and the fact I could feel how hard he had gotten against my leg, my own dick giving away just how turned on I was. I wanted to play it cool, to act like I wasn’t willing to kill for his body, but the way he kissed me made that impossible. 

“Yes,” I moaned slightly as his hand snaked up my thigh and his lips met my neck in my favourite spot. The warm droplets from the shower were nothing to the heat of his mouth or the frenzy he was stirring up inside of me by stoking over my thigh and waist, only momentarily stopping in between them to make me want him further. I suddenly felt thirsty, like I hadn’t drank for days, and he was a cool, glass of water with condensation running down the side. I wanted to drink him in, so I lunged forward and tried to press my lips on his own again. I only groaned in frustration when he inched away slightly, my waiting mouth only landing on the empty, wet air between us as he smirked at my attempt to take control. 

“Be patient,” he demanded, only making it harder to obey his request by palming my dick. He was giving me enough contact to feel good, but I knew just how much better it could get, so it wasn’t enough. I needed him closer, I needed him inside of me like he had been those times before, but he was showing no signs of giving in to my whimpers any time soon. 

Gerard was a sadist, I had almost concluded on that in the long years of knowing him. That suspicion was only confirmed though when he dropped to his knees right in front of my aching body, kissing and sucking on the taut skin on my hip, completely ignoring my pleas and slapping my hand away when I tried to do it for myself. I was so turned on, there was no stopping this. It would have been easier to stop a moving train at full speed by hand than to stop what he was doing to me. My toes curled causing the porcelain bath to squeak and expose the way I was trying to restrain myself, so instead, I wrapped my fingers in his soaking wet hair, perhaps curling them a little too tightly to be comfortable, but not particularly caring. I wanted to hurt him just as much as I wanted to fuck him, so I was going to do both. 

With my hand being so intertwined with his hair that he whimpered in pain, he glanced up at me with eyes so hungry I almost stumbled. I thought his eyes had been irresistible only moments early, only illuminated more by the droplets of water, but that was nothing to the way he looked up at me from his knees, and that was before I had even had chance to take in his crooked smirk with knowing he had me exactly where he wanted me. 

“Who’s your best fucking friend?” He mumbled, his warm lips already resuming sucking on my protruding hip bone. 

“You are,” I gasped, my head hitting the tiled wall behind me almost hard enough to cause me to start seeing stars. 

“I can’t hear you,” he said, a certain seductive growl coating his voice. 

“You’re my best fucking friend, Gerard,” I whimpered as he wrapped his tight, red lips around the head of my dick. He snaked one hand around me to cup my ass with such force I was certain his fingertips could have left bruises, as his other began jacking me off, meeting his lips as the rest of me hit the back of his throat. I dared to look down at him, but it was seemingly a mistake with the way his cheeks hollowed around me, only breaking the contact to swirl his tongue on me before resuming what he was doing before. I could already feel the tightness building up in the pit of my stomach, which was only made worse when he retracted his mouth completely and pumped my dick with his tongue out waiting, almost becoming too tempting to resist. I wanted nothing more than to cum at that moment, I wanted it so badly I very nearly could have cried. I couldn’t do that though, so instead, I started eliciting moans I had only fucking heard from actual porn before. I had never really liked watching that all too much, it had always seemed too forced and put on, but there was nothing false about the way he had me tossing my head back and crying out for him; nothing at all. 

“You need to stop,” I almost growled at him, pulling his hair so hard I was pretty sure I would have a dark clump of it in my hand. 

“Mmm?” He hummed from around me, the vibrations of his soft, yet far from innocent voice paired with his fucking eyes glancing up at me yet again making it almost impossible to pull him off me. I knew he was acting cocky, so instead of entertaining it, I yanked him up harshly so that he was back on his feet. I fumbled behind me to turn the spray of the shower off to signify it was well and truly over and I furiously attached my lips to his, moaning lost obscenities into his open mouth. We barely separated long enough to climb out of the bath, and it only lead to an even more aggressive reconnection of our lips. He kissed me so furiously as he continued to cup my ass to the point he had literally lifted me off my feet. Both of us were soaked, but neither of us gave a shit. Instead, I wrapped my legs around his waist as I felt his dick slide against me only making me want it more. For saying he was hauling all of my weight, I had never seen him move so quickly without even disconnecting our lips. My hands were all up in his hair again, only being dragged out of it when he threw me back onto his bed. The dry sheets against my wet skin felt unnatural, the linen sticking to my sticky flesh, but that was nothing to the way he was treating me. I had never fucked out of pure anger before, but the more intense it got, the feistier I felt. He was seemingly no different, treating me like I was one of those fucking whores that were so quick to fall at his feet, but I didn’t care. I wanted to be bit, scratched and all things in between, the tension I had felt because of him for years finally coming to a head. His body carelessly tumbled on top of mine, my legs holding him in place as I felt him grind against me. 

“What do you want?” He kissed his way up to my ear to whisper the question he already knew the answer to. There he was being a sadist again though, he needed me to say it. He needed me to confess I needed him to fuel him with the power he so desperately craved. 

“I want you to fuck me,” I practically purred, “I want you to fuck me like one of those stupid bitches who could never please you like I do.” 

I get what I was saying was fucking ruthless, something I would have cringed at had I not been so turned on, but there was no point in lying anymore. The barriers to my inhibitions always lowered when he had me like that, the walls to my heart momentarily coming down enough for him to drag some truths from me. 

He did not speak again, instead, he grabbed my own hair so forcefully my eyes watered, but it was not enough to make me stop. With the force of his hand, my mouth dragged open where he kissed me again with no mercy. It was enough to distract me from the fact with his free hand he was fumbling in his drawer to find something, even though I fully knew what it was. He gasped in a sort of relief when he appeared to have found the bottle of lube, the uncapping of the lid loud and clear even though the vibrations were battling against the bass of his music that was still playing from earlier. He had me pinned down with his kiss even though he retracted his hand from my hair to aid with dousing his fingers. I was so lost in the kiss, I wasn’t even aware of the way he made no effort to be gentle as he pushed his fingers into me like had those times before. It made me hiss in pain, but I welcomed it. I feared if I did not hurt physically, the emotional torment in me would have won. Having rough, angry makeup sex always seemed foreign to me because all of the other times we had been desperately in love with each other. I was still feeling that, but it was only heightened further with my absolute hatred for him so being aggressive only seemed logical; plus, I could not deny the way it was making my toes curl in utter pleasure. 

I began rolling my hips down to meet his fingers as they quickly became not enough. I needed more. I needed him. He curled his fingers inside of me, only briefly brushing that spot I was trying so desperately to get him to touch. I didn’t think it was because he didn’t know where it was, no, because he had learnt the spot so well that he hit it almost accurately whenever he wanted to. He was doing it on purpose, only to wind me up and need him further. I had lost the will to not appear desperate for him so not to feed his ego, instead, I was now whimpering and essentially fucking myself with the way I was adjusting to his fingers. All he did was smirk at me before stopping completely, his stare flickering all over my face. 

“You’re beautiful, you know that right?” He stated, moving his body so that we were not even touching anymore. 

“What?” I asked becoming increasingly flustered and even more turned on. 

“You. Your body. Your face. Your everything!” He traced his fingers down my torso, his touch soft yet sending several volts of electricity through me to the point I almost hissed in pain at the contrasting contact. “In fact,” he said cooly getting to his knees and dragging me right up with him, “I don’t think I deserve you. I don’t think anybody deserves you, bug.” 

Although his words were warm and kind, his actions were not and I did not know which I preferred. He shuffled so he was now behind me, kissing my neck with soft, chaste kisses, making me shiver all over and toss my head back to get more contact. Instead of treating me like the prized glass he usually did, he once again wrapped his hand around my neck, forcefully dragging my face around to kiss him whilst squeezing my throat enough for me to become light headed but be in no real danger. It was as someone had snapped their fingers, and just like that, his speed increased again. His shoved me hard into the bed so that I was bent over, yanking my head up by my hair so that my back remained arch and vulnerable whilst his other hand steadied himself on my waist. For a brief second, he retracted his contact but I did not dare more, nor did I want to. I waited expectedly as I knew he was still taking the time to put the proper precautions in place. I knew this was some fucked up angry sex, but I also knew he’d never intentionally hurt me for his own gain of pleasure. No, despite our urgency for each other's bodies, I could hear him fumble with lube behind him before I felt him press against me and resume the placement of his hands. 

“You sure?” I heard the frown in his voice, unsure of whether I was doing this to please him or because I actually wanted him to. God, I was so fucking sick of him treating me like I was fragile, I wanted him to fucking hurt me just like I wanted to hurt him so that I could let that pent up anger inside of myself out just like letting off a firework. He had ignited me now, I needed to go off in flames into the sky just so that I could come crashing back down and be calm again. I knew I was acting cocky, but that didn’t mean I wasn’t nervous. Before, we had just had sex face to face, slow and careful with mumbles of affection and kisses to fill the spaces between us. Now that was not possible, now I had my face shoved against his comforter, my fingers gripping the sheets being the only thing to keep me grounded in this reality. 

I simply groaned my consent at him, begging him to just fucking do whatever he wanted. That seemed to be enough as he pushed inside of me, this time being a little less careful than before but not to the point I could not handle it. I felt tender, my whole body stiffening for a second before I arched my back further to silently tell him he could continue. I had not realised that I had begun to bite the sheets we were on, but when I dared to open my scrunched up eyes for a split second, I saw I had them right beneath my teeth to stop me from begging him to go both harder and faster. He began to thrust his hips, purposely angling them in the way I was pretty sure only he could master to hit that spot inside of me that drove me crazy. Every time he dragged himself against it, I whimpered as I felt waves of pleasure echo around my body, only made more intense by quickly alternating between pulling out and slamming back in to then grinding against it mercifully. There was something missing though, a feeling like when you get that itch inside of your throat that you just can’t fucking physically scratch. I knew how to reach it though, I thought, as I dared to release one of my death grips on the sheets to trail down my own body to try and touch myself. Although he had always told me to do that, usually our sweaty bodies face to face stopping him from doing it himself, this time it seemed to annoy him that I would even try. I had only realised how tight the vice grip he had on my hair was when he let go, making my head feel unusually free and lost. With his now free hand, he trailed it around and yanked my hand that was on my dick to be thrown behind my back as if he was fucking arresting me or something. I thought he was just being cruel, but with the hand, he had been steadying himself with that he had on my hip now snaked in front of me to finally give him the touch I had been craving. All he had to do was stroke me a few time whilst continuing to thrust inside of me, and I was gone. The waves of pleasure inside me quickly turned into a fucking tsunami as I couldn’t edge myself any further. I cried out for him, just like he fucking wanted, as I spilt all into his hand. He did not retract his touch until I flinched, the feeling being too much, too soon. I could almost see the smirk on his face as he pulled back his hand to once again have one balanced on my hip and the other wrapped tightly in my hair. I was basking in the waves of pleasure emitting from my body as he continued to push that spot inside of me, his increased movements signifying to me he was close. I heard escaped moans from his lips, his movements becoming jagged as he struggled to continue. By the time he had finished, he seemed to have given up on trying mask his whining, instead, he was full frontally calling out as if we had nothing to hide. 

//

He collapsed on top of me, panting heavily in my ear as we both felt weak and exhausted from both pleasure and relief. It had seemingly worked, I no longer wanted to rip his head off, maybe just bash it against a wall now and then. 

“I love you, baby,” she sighed happily, kissing into my hair before trailing his tired lips to messily land over my own. 

“I love you too,” I confessed despite knowing it was dangerous. He did not mean it in the same way that I did, and it was hard to explain why. I guessed I wanted nothing more than to officially be with him, to finally start a life together, but I think he just loved me like muscle memory. I had been in his life for so long that he only cared for me because he could not remember to do any different. Loving me was a routine to him, to me it was like I was stepping further into the unknown. 

“Franks,” he giggled. 

“What?”

“I think we’re going to have to sleep at your house tonight, my sheets have gone all soggy because I was too far gone to put a towel down.”

Although he was not wrong, his utterance still shocked me. Yes, it hadn’t even been a week since he had last stayed over at my house, but it had felt like a fucking lifetime. 

“You-you’re coming home with me?” I frowned. 

“Erm, yeah, durh!” He pulled a face at my apparent stupidity. 

“Oh but-“

“But what?”

“I thought we were just friends?” I asked in a small voice, knowing I was just going to break my own little heart. 

“ _Best_ of friends,” he nudged me as he giggled once again, as if his words had not just shot me right out the sky like a baby bird. 

I knew I should have got up and walked away, but I couldn’t. Gerard to me was like a power source and just to be near him rejuvenated me. I knew he hurt me, lead me on and could be cruel, but there was just something about the way he traced circles on the back of my hand that made it all okay. Maybe one day I would have been strong enough to leave him but for now, I had to be content with just being friends with him. He didn’t want commitment just as much as I didn’t want to lose him, so I was going have to suck it up like the adult I now apparently was. 

 

Driving home only made that harder to accept that as he reached over and linked our little fingers in what seemed like a natural action. I knew he wasn’t consciously thinking to be affectionate because he was focused on the road again, singing along to the soft song playing over his speaker system, both the warmth of his hand and the melodic tint to his voice being enough to make me fall even deeper in love with him. 

“ _I wish you would come pick me up,_

_ Take me out, _

_ Fuck me up, _

_ Steal my records, _

_ Screw all my friends they’re all full of shit with a smile on your face as you do it again,” _

He smiled slightly at the last line he sung, seemingly coming back to reality as he shook off his daydream. 

“What are you looking at, short-arse?” He crookedly smirked at me. 

“Your big head,” I jested back trying to ignore the way my heart was hammering for him. I looked up at the night sky feeling dizzy as the stars sped by us, reminding me how small and insignificant myself and my problems were when you comprehended the whole universe. That was the problem though, to me Gerard was the universe and nothing less, so even the soft touch of his little finger latched onto mine felt as if the world could end at any moment. I wasn’t quite ready for the end of the world, no, and keeping us as friends who fucked was the only way to stop that from happening, so I guessed I was going to have to deal with it otherwise I’m pretty sure my world would have crashed and fucking burnt.


	56. it's like you're trying to get to heaven in a hurry

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the delayed response I started a new job and I'm still trying to figure out a schedule
> 
> thank you for sticking with me it means a lot and I will try and update as quickly as possible now im getting my life back together haha xo
> 
> There's references to depression in this just a warning 
> 
> The song for this chapter is https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YOZZomkMZLk

Being loved by him was sweet, despite it not being exactly how I had wanted because it was still better than nothing. I tried to reassure myself to define our connection was simply impossible so there was not yet a label that seemed worthy for us, but maybe that was just to keep the harrowing thoughts of betrayal away. Despite myself, I had poured and invested everything into him, slowly bulldozing down those walls I had ever so carefully built around my heart. Now, I knew he could invade his way into my soul with his one-man army, and I had no defence left to protect myself anymore. I spoke of him as if I was always expecting the next heartbreak, which I guessed I was. However, Christmas and the new year passed us by quickly, falling in love with him further only making the winter months merge into one. I barely left his side just as he barely left mine, because it appeared all we needed was each other. I was Gerard’s shadow, I often let him absorb the sunlight he needed even if it meant he blocked it out for me, just so I could walk by his side. I get how that sounded like I had given everything to him, but I had done that with him only returning the favour.

Of course, we still fought; we always had done. Ever since Gerard and I had been old enough to hold our own fucking heads up, we had bickered only to be quickly resolved by unintentional laughter that made it impossible to be mad at each other anymore. Our arguments had matured just like us, our fights about who got to be the yellow power ranger had slowly become replaced with disagreements of concern with how many cigarettes passed his lips or about the drugs I knew he still consumed. In a fucked-up kind of way, I loved those fights because they were never major enough to break us apart, but only made us reunite harder with pure, undesirable passion. I had not realised that over the years I had become addicted to the pain he caused me, and without it, I would be numb. I used to pray for those years when I would be old and settled, but now I resented the idea, I liked fighting until to the point it was almost too much but then fucking just as hard to make it all okay again. For the first time, I was enjoying being young and fucked up, the dizziness caused by being in love so hard only making me crave those moments more.

I was almost certain those closest around us must have thought our relationship was a little strange for that of friends, but if anything, we had just gotten better at lying. Now whenever my mother asked me if Gerard was staying over _again_ on a school night, I merely would say his mental health was not doing so good and cold, dark nights made it worse so he enjoyed just being by my side. She had warned me to be careful, of course, it was apparently great I had my best friends mental state at the forefront of my mind, but I must be careful not to invest too much time in him and neglect myself. _Well,_ I had thought to myself, it was a bit fucking late for that. Besides, I did not feel bad for the information I fed her because, for the most part, they were not lies. Gerard’s wellbeing was an ever-changing spectrum, and although it often scared me to not know what I was going to get, all I wanted to do was go through it with him. Those days that the February sky was bright with the freshly brewing spring sunshine were the good ones. Those were the mornings he would rise early, he would shower and study and then we would go for walks or drives that would last hours and just appreciate those small moments in life where it just wasn’t too much and we could bask in the happiness that it caused us. Others, we just took them as they came. He reassured me so many times that on those days when he could not stop shaking, being sick and craving the realise of oblivion, that it was nothing to do with me and simply being by his side made the nightmares stop just a little. I ached to take that mental torment off him just for a little bit, but there was nothing I could do other than remind him to take his pills and stroke his hair to soothe him until the storms passed. Those days had started to become increasingly infrequent, but with the threat of our university entrance exams looming, the pressure often just made him give up more. His mother had sat and told him that whatever happened, they would love and support him until he was happy, but it was never enough. He was not ungrateful, he knew what he had, but that only made it worse. He begged to know why he felt this way when he should be happy now, but demons from the past don’t just die because circumstances change. I know I had said I was afraid of growing old and losing the fire of being young, but it was nothing like the way Gerard resented the change that adulthood brought. Gerard was also addicted to the sadness that his childhood had brought him, the comforting blankets of depression and self-despair being all he had known for so long. Being an adult meant pressure, it meant acting in a self-loathing, numb way was no longer acceptable, and that fucking terrified him. Growing up was everyone else's right of passage, but to Gerard, it was a baptism of fire.

Speaking of growing up, I also appeared to be dragging my heels in with everything I should have been doing. I was living in the most important, malleable years of my life with no real clue with what I was doing, yet I wasn't trying very hard to find out. I was living in the here and now, and all I knew was that I wanted Gerard and not much else. It was difficult to juggle my life when all I did was live, breath and think of him, which meant that I perhaps was not studying for my exams as hard as I should have been nor was I really focusing on soccer. My teachers and Grimshaw were becoming increasingly frustrated with how much I was apparently throwing away, but to me, I couldn’t concentrate on anything that did not involve him. When I wasn’t with him and I was trying to study, I felt a giddy kind of sick and nervous every time I thought of the way his arms wrapped around me, or the soft ghost touch of his kiss on my neck that would make me shiver even when he was miles away from me, making it fucking impossible to read about circadian rhythms and mitosis. However, when we tried to study together it was worse. I would sit for 20 minutes before he would complain he was bored and snake his hands around my waist and press kisses into my neck and onto my throat, and needless to say, the books got tossed to the side. As for soccer, I would try and find any excuse to get out of it and even when I couldn’t, I would find a way to sprint off as soon as Grimshaw blew the whistle which would have been unheard of only months earlier. It wasn’t like I didn’t enjoy it anymore, I had just had found something that captivated my attention even more.

I still spent time with my friends, just as he made time for his. It was shit, but it needed to be done. Plus, it was easier once we were back at school as although I had to give him up to those fucking animals in the day, I knew I would be crawling into his warm car at the end of the day and we would once again be alone and be free. I hated it when he went out with his friends outside of school hours, but I knew he needed to keep up the facade of us just being friends. Sometimes, I became so riddled with anxiety that Ross or Poppy would crack under Joe’s pressure that I couldn’t sleep. That was nothing to Gerard, the thought of being exposed was killing him. I felt guilty in a way for putting him through it because sometimes he would shake and breathe in a weird, jagged kind of way and work himself into a state with utter fear. Yes, I hated exams, but I wanted them to come sooner than ever so we could both be free from the restraints of this too-small town and those God damn worries would ease. You could whisper in this town and everyone would hear it, so to have to put so much trust in people I did not even know too well was a killer. For a couple of months, I heard nothing from Poppy and I was pretty sure Gerard hadn’t either. I was half glad she was out of our lives, but that only made it harder to trust her. The tension sometimes built up so hard, it came crashing down.

_—- January ——_

_I had felt sick. Fucking sick to my stomach. The gossip I had heard at school had wounded me like an arrow to the heart, but I wasn’t crippled; I was fucking furious. I was pacing back and forth like a fucking psychiatric patient waiting by his car to explode in his face. I had a key to his house, but when I felt like this it felt unnatural to enter his home. I would rather wait for him and rip this off like a bandaid, no need to get warm and comfortable when it was only going to make it hurt more. That was the end of us, I was almost sure of it. Out of all the unforgivable things he had done to me, I was certain that this was the worse._

_I paced for almost an hour waiting for his return, the dirty, grey sky above me turning a murky blue with the twilight hour which was setting in. I wished it wasn’t a Friday because I definitely did not feel the usual tranquil release of the weekend, but maybe it was a good thing, it meant I had two whole days to try to not rip someones head off. I was pretty sure if I had seen any of them at school, I would have snapped. At that point, I didn’t give a fuck about exposing our secret, I just wanted to fucking kill something. I couldn’t get over the thought of his hands touching them, his tantalising voice making them shiver. I wanted to cut off their hands and tongues just so they could not hurt me anymore, but even that would not be as cruel as what they had put me through._   
_“Oh hey, baby!” He flashed me a dopey grin as he trudged up the pathway to his house, probably returning from them again. His voice was his second-biggest power after his gaze, it almost tricking me into falling under his spell-like he was the pied piper with the warmth it was coated in just for me._   
_“Don’t fuckin’ call me baby,” I spat in his direction like acid. We were not together, but we had agreed to be loyal. The thought of him breaking that promise had made me snap like a glow stick, and suddenly I was too charged up to merely give up on him. Letting him get away with this and simply sulking away was an easy way out, I wanted blood, and I wanted it from him._   
_“Hey, what the fuck?” He frowned so genuinely that I almost believed he had no idea what I was talking about._   
_“You touched him,” my voice cracked, the strength I had possessed only seconds before deserting me and leaving me stranded with just his concerned eyes on me._   
_“What the fuck are you talking about?” He strived closer to grab my arm, in which I snatched it away from his touch._   
_“You and Conner,” I felt sick with the confession. The words that left my lips only making them truer and therefore, more deadly._   
_“Oh for fuck’s sake, Frank!” He sighed heavily. He couldn’t hide from this though, it was going around the school like wildfire that the biggest fuck boy that we all knew of had hooked up with one of the few openly gay kids at a party the week before. I had disliked Conner before, he had always been too touchy-feely with Gerard despite his apparent discomfort with it, but it was apparently not as one-sided as I had believed. It was obvious Gerard was not completely straight, I could testify for that one myself, but for some reason, the thought of him with another guy tormented me in a whole new, worst kind of way. I felt like both Gerard and I were unsure of what we wanted, but we had discovered so much about our bodies and our minds together that it felt almost sacred between the two of us. Now someone else had been on that journey with him, I could not get past it. Just the thought of the two of them together made my skin tingle, like there were rotting maggots squirming under the surface of it. “Do you fucking believe that, seriously?”_   
_“Well, there must be some truth to it.”_   
_“No, there really isn’t! He was upset at Joe’s last weekend because those assholes were taking the piss out of his sexuality and I guessed it touched a nerve with me obviously because of you! I called Joe a cunt and we fought a bit so he started saying to people that apparently Conner was sucking my dick and that's why I was so quick to defend him. That obviously isn’t fucking true, it's just a rumour Joe started. I don’t even like the guy, he’s too full on!”_   
_“But-“_   
_“But nothing, Frank! That rumour is pathetic and childish and we both know it!”_   
_I suddenly felt guilty, the rumour obviously sounding foolish. If Gerard had touched him in a place others would have seen, there would have inevitably been some kind of telling evidence like a photo or video. That didn’t exist though, and maybe, just maybe, I had been too quick to believe the now-obvious, childish lie._   
_“Do you think I would touch anyone else?” His voice softened as he got closer to me. I ached to push him, to tell him that he’d already betrayed me like that, but I once again became lost in the erumpent yet seemingly genuine care in his eyes._

_Things were okay for those few seconds we were simply gazing at each other, riding the wave down from our irate high we had just been thrust upon. That was until my phone buzzed in my hand and I made the mistake of looking at it. I don’t know why she chose that moment, it couldn’t have been a worse time, but Poppy had messaged me over Facebook with just a simple hi, but that was all that was needed for another wave to sweep us right back up again._   
_“What the fuck?” Gerard said in a hurt confusion as he read the brief message on my screen._   
_“I erh- I don’t know why she just messaged me,” I confessed honestly. I hadn’t even spoken to Poppy since my birthday nearly a couple of months prior, all my trust in her being through Gerard and Ross’ communications._   
_“Fucking bullshit!” He snapped, completely unbothered by the cold wind ruffling his thin sweater. “How fucking could you come here accusing me of shit like that when you’re talking to her!”_   
_“I’m not!”_   
_“Don’t even lie to me! I know Poppy!” He seethed pushing past me and walking down his path. I was suddenly possessed with rage, fucking furious that he could accuse me of something he wasn’t exactly innocent of with a girl who he had slept with._   
_“Gerard!” I yanked harshly on his wrist, digging my nails harshly into his cold skin to avoid him from ripping his hand away like he was desperately trying to. “Read my fucking messages! I can prove I haven’t spoken to her and-“_   
_“I’m scared, Frank,” he mumbled. He was using the wind to his advantage, letting it whip his now overgrown hair over his face so I could not read him. All I had to go off was the fear in his voice, contrasting to the hurt he had shown only moments earlier._   
_“Scared of what?” I asked, only tightening my grip on him as if he was going to disappear if I let go._   
_“I can’t bear the thought of you with anybody else!”_   
_I wanted to scream at him that it was quite easy to avoid that happening, all he had to do is say he wanted to be with me, but I couldn’t bring myself to do it. I feared that another rejection would have killed me, and at least if he was showing me uncommitted love, he was still giving me the affection I had become so addicted to._   
_“Me too,” I merely whispered back, an absolute cop-out of a response. He pulled me closer, wrapping his fingers around the back of my neck and head and running the short strands of hair there through his fingers. He simply pulled me in and pressed a kiss into my hair, sighing heavily as he did so as if he hadn’t just made everything almost okay again._

————

We argued about Poppy a lot, but I think that was just the tension. I had not seen her, nor had I really responded to her message, but Gerard had. I had to put my faith in her without having much to do with her. Being close to her was too dangerous, yet I needed to be just close enough so she would protect me which was barely fucking possible. I found some comfort in Ross though, someone who I had grown extremely close to in the winter months. He had begun to join me at soccer, my friends and Grimshaw quickly adapting to the newest member of our squad once they realised he was not Joe’s play by play. The fact that he knew about Gerard and I was exciting, it being just that little taste of freedom and my wilful reality that I was so desperately craving. It was hard at first to act affectionate with Gerard when Ross was there, but soon the temptation of his lips and the touch of his hand was too much and we slowly became ourselves again

I had always assumed Gerard’s depression to get worse in the latter winter months, the cruel despondent emptiness of January filling his life with dark nights and lack of light, but this year seemed different. I wouldn’t have said he was okay, but he lasted until about March before having a chronic episode of his mental illness. I remembered the last day he seemed at ease well as it ran through my head over and over, doing anything to try and grasp back the happiness he had felt that day. We had been at Shannon’s, just me, Gerard, Tom and Ross enjoying one of those weird, warm days in early March that teased us with upcoming spring weather. It was hardly baking hot, but that little break of sunlight bursting through the sky that had been grey for months was enough to make us hopeful. I had awoken that Sunday morning to find Gerard with a small smile on his face, that tatty fucking cardigan I loved so much pulled tightly over his hands as he cradled a cup of coffee, and I just knew he was content. Joe was busy working or something so for once, I did not protest the idea of going to Shannon’s. I did not like the idea that Tom was still going to be around, but Shannon’s energy seemed to balance his out, never being cruel like I had seen him be when Joe was around. Shannon had been playing Kingston Town and Could you be Loved?, Tom just lying back in her arms as she stoked small circles in his hair with her manicured nails whilst singing softly just to him. The sight made me happy, the love radiating between them only adding to the new warmth in the budding spring air. Gerard was staring at them too, slowly edging his hand under the pillow I had on my lap to loosely link our little fingers together. It was private, but that love radiating from Shannon and Tom seemed to bask us both.  
“This just reminds me of a few summers ago,” he whispered softly to me despite the information not being confidential. I knew exactly what he meant, I didn’t have to query it, all I had to do was clutch his pinky finger tightly in my own. That wasn’t our summer music, but it reminded us both of what was.

_—— Summer 4 years ago ——-_

_The basking heat of the Italian summer reigned down and reflected off his now olive skin. He had tried so desperately to hide from the rays to avoid the inevitable tan, but it appeared to be futile as he turned a healthy golden colour and the dark circles under his eyes slowly began to disappear. I didn’t want to go home, that would mean his tan would fade and so would his contentment, but we only had a couple of days left before the cruel fate of reality pulled us backwards. I didn’t want Gerard to go home to his new friends, the boy I knew and loved slowly changing into what they wanted him to be. I had managed to salvage him in the week we had been away together, but I knew he was going to slip right through my fingers just like the golden sand did that we were sat upon._   
_“Come on, bug!” He kicked me, flicking sand at me much to my annoyance, but the joy on his face quickly stripping it away._

_He threw his arms back carelessly as the muddy tones of the guitar blaring from our speaker engulfed him. His once high concerns of strangers staring at him disappearing just like the sand in the ever-approaching afternoon tide. The soft noise of the waves around us were nothing the hum of his voice as he moved to the rhythm of the song._   
_“I wanna be adored!” He giggled as the song hit the chorus. “What?” He flickered his eyes open, once again catching me staring in awe at him._   
_“Nothin’” I shrugged trying to ignore the way my heart was hammering for him._   
_“Now stand up and pretend you’re at Spike Island with me!” He nudged me with his foot as I pretended to be annoyed as I got to my feet, joining him in the over eccentric air guitar motion._

—————

Memories like that made me smile at times like the present. I didn’t know how I had let it happen, but Gerard had got bad again. He had slowly drifted away from looking after himself, his hair becoming messy and his skin taking on that pasty grey tone I hated. At first, I thought it was me he was backing away from, but once I witnessed the uncontrollable shaking in his hands when our science teacher reminded us of the seriousness of our exams, I knew it ran much deeper than that. When we were together, he simply wanted me close but did not desire to speak much. Of course, I was happy to oblige to that, but I knew it just made it harder on him when I left. He had barely eaten in two weeks, his lack of sleep only adding to the macabre look on his face. Gerard was manically depressed, anxious about the changes in his life but being too low to do anything about it; it was a fucking toxic mix. I begged him to take his pills, but I wasn’t so sure if he was or not. I feared he was turning to different, more overbearing chemicals to comfort him, but it’s not like he would ever tell me that.

Gerard pulled back completely from school and his friends for a while, lying about going away to give him the time he so desperately needed to recover. For a couple of days, he even pulled away from me. I tried to let him heal by himself, but I just couldn’t leave it, the thought of him struggling by himself not leaving my mind like a hostile nightmare. I had gone over that Friday night to see him violently shaking in his bed as the anxiety-ridden demons inside of his head snatched him further away from me.  
“Gerard?” I cried desperately as I walked into his dark, decrepit bedroom. He did not respond but did not push me away either  when I crawled by his side and clutched his trembling frame. “What’s wrong?”  
“I don’t- don’t know,” he whimpered.  
“Did you wanna get away somewhere?” I blurted out, not really sure of the plan I was proposing. I expected him to deny, to ride out the depressive wave until he was well enough to resume a role in society, but that wasn’t the case.  
“I think I’d like that,” he replied in a small voice.

It was a small victory, but fuck, just to crack into the complicated chamber in which his dark thoughts resided only made me love him more.


	57. If I could change the way that you see yourself you wouldn't wonder why you hear "they don't deserve you"

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> SO during the time between these chapters my car broke down so I've had even less time to sort this but we finally got there!!!
> 
> I also have changed my shift pattern so I don't work Friday's anymore so hopefully that will mean more consistent uploads....
> 
> thank you for sticking with me xxxxxx
> 
> ALSO!!!!!
> 
> THIS CHAPTER makes references to suicide and suicidal thoughts so let me know if you'd rather me explain the plot to you if u don't wanna read through it xo
> 
> the song for this chapter is everything I wanted by Billie Eilish

Taking up my whole study week break from school to do absolutely no revision seemed in theory extremely stupid, but in my gut, it just felt right. I somewhat feared Gerard would change his mind on the mini-vacation I had proposed but he reluctantly appeared at my house just as dusk was setting on that Saturday evening. I felt awful for not being able to drive, despite the fact I had actually been trying with my lessons. I was trying anything and everything to alleviate pressure off him, even if that meant I was burning my own candle at both ends. I knew it was not healthy, nor what he wanted me to do, but I cared about him too much to listen to his pleas of begging me to let him rot in his room alone.

 

Planning our vacation took no time at all, I knew exactly where I wanted to go. The destination was somewhat contrasting to the sombre atmosphere amongst us in the car on the way there, the echos from the past of us messing about as children in the back of his dad’s car ringing loud in my head leaving an eerie chill on my skin as I realised we could never go back to those days. His grandparent’s holiday home wasn’t too far away, just a little coastal town a few hours away that was practically deserted in these bitter winter months. The funfair and beaches lay dormant as the dark February clouds cloaked the sky,  the bright lights of the pier in hibernation until the easter sun came to break up the ice and snow for spring. I hadn’t even had to tell Gerard that’s where we were going, he merely rang his grandmother and asked for the key that very morning, mumbling vague answers to her questions on why we wanted to go to a summer home in the dead of winter. He had told her we wanted to get away so that we could revise without the tempting distractions back home, and although I had brought my books to study from, I didn’t think that was the purpose of our trip.

 

The conversation between us was minimal, each interaction I manage to drag from him feeling like a strenuous effort as my questions were always met with that monotonous reply. It was difficult to not get tired when he was like this, but I knew I need to keep my composure. If Gerard ever thought that he was a burden on me, he would have clammed up even more. Instead, I let the radio hum quietly like white noise as the soft purr of his engine reminded me of our destination. Gerard looked tired. His shaky hands grasped at the steering wheel as he stared at the empty freeway in front of us, slushy rain fell from the sky, never quite solidifying enough to give the purity of snowfall. Every heavy droplet that splashed on his windshield almost caused him to jump, his tired eyes darting around at each splatter as if his anxiety was making it seem like mini comets falling from the sky. I had never seen him look so drained, his well-worn cardigan pulled tightly over his thin fingers to try and give him and his trembling hands at least some privacy from my concerned questions. I felt out of my depth with his depression, but I loved him too much to leave him to fight it by himself. Once he pulled one of his hands down from the wheel and placed it on his armrest, I couldn’t quite resist from creeping my fingers over to loosely link with his own. I dared to look at him as I felt his cold, rough skin against my own which only made him force a half-smile at me, his eyes staying glued in front of him despite there being no traffic. 

 

“Frank,” I heard his weak voice say as I got jolted awake with the crashing back of reality. I had tried my hardest not to fall asleep, but I had been awake for days now, constantly tossing and turning with a plaguing worry for the boy that I had loved for as long as I could remember. I had been thrown in and out of a restless sleep, the gentle hum of the car soothing me into a slumber before my disturbing dreams of him slipping through my fingers waking me right back up again.

“Sorry,” I mumbled back at him, trying to fight the yawn threatening to take over.

“Don’t be,” he barely whispered back, the crunch of the gravel as he pulled onto the driveway of the vacation site beating him in volume. 

 

I had not been back here in a few years, Gerard’s past few summers being so consumed with girls and drugs he didn’t have time to waste a week here with me and his family anymore. I sometimes thought he came here when he wanted to be alone, his car sometimes being awol from his driveway for days at a time with no other feasible explanation, but he never admitted that to me. I had missed it, the smell of the salty sea mere yards away from the handful of beach houses and the crashing of the waves always filling me with a certain kind of nostalgia that nothing else could. I could hear the harsh coastal wind whipping around the metal frame of the car, but for the brief seconds I closed my eyes, I could almost feel the hot August sun on my skin from all those years ago. I could not spend my time recycling my old reality though, and I had to get real. We were still here, it’s just that this time the summer shutters were closed to keep the blowing sand out for the winter, and the marram grass leading up to the pathway of his grandparent's place was overgrown and whipping around harshly.

 

It was late and the sky was an inky black colour, but the absence of the city lights meant that the moon and starlight was enough to illuminate the pale blue wooden panelling of the house and the rickety white steps leading up to the porch. Fuck, for a moment I felt whole again. 

“You go inside, I’ll grab the bags,” Gerard sighed heavily as he turned the key to his ignition and his car became as dead as the small town around us. Without the glare of his headlights, I realised just how isolated and alone we truly were which almost made me scared. I fucking wished I was 10 again and his grandmother would be there greeting us warmly with a cool glass of lemonade and the reminder that we could go and play on the beach as soon as we had something to eat. She wasn’t there though, she wasn’t here to look after us, it was just me and Gerard in the big, wide world. 

“Nah,” I refused, getting out his car and going to the back to get my own bag. For some reason, I didn’t want to go into the beach hut alone, it felt almost alien to not have Gerard be my shadow. 

 

He silently agreed with me, bending down and picking his own bag up before scrambling in his pocket to find the keys he had picked up from his grandparent's earlier that day. Recently he had been distant, never asking me to stay the night or run errands with him, so it felt nice to just be back by his side. I had missed him, and for some reason, I still fucking did even though he was stood right next to me. His woollen cardigan was much too thin for the February weather, but he did not shiver, even when the wind blew it wide open. I hurried him up the rickety wooden steps, begging to just get him in the warm even though he did not seem in a rush himself. 

 

I hated to admit it, but it was awkward. Every conversation I tried to hold, he shot down with a mere hum of a response, the emptiness of a late talk show re-run being the only thing to save us from complete silence. I had hauled some of the firewood from the previous season over to the fireplace before igniting it as the house was freezing cold with winter ghosts and seasonal rejection. Gerard had merely sat there and stared blankly at the TV, his eyes never following the shitty host enough to convince me he was actually interested in the bullshit being displayed to him. Gerard never watched TV, he could never sit still long enough without his fingers itching to do something more creative, so it saddened me to see his lack of fidgeting.

 

My heart broke for him and the shell of a person he was seemingly becoming.

 

“Did you wanna go to bed?” I said fighting back another yawn as the clock threatened the early hours of the next morning. 

“Yes,” he responded bluntly. 

“Gerard?”

“What?”

“Why won’t you look at me?” I frowned, my insecurities taking control of my utterances and spewing out of my mouth like a possessive demon.

“Tired,” he grunted.

“That doesn’t mean you can’t look at me! You won’t even fucking touch me!” I blurted out, proving my point by reaching over and resting my fingers lightly on his wrist, making him jolt away like I had given him some kind of shock.

“Don’t do that!” He snapped in response, protectively clutching at his wrist as if I had just attempted to snap it or something. 

“I can't fucking do anything around you!” I fretted.

“Oh, don’t fucking start,” he rolled his eyes at me, “Why would you suggest coming all this way away from civilisation just to piss me off?”

“I’m trying to help you!” I defended myself.

“Well, I don’t fucking need help!” He got to his feet, throwing his arms in the air and dispelling something I had not wanted to see from his pocket.

We both stared down at the half-empty baggy that floated almost contrastingly graciously down to the floor, despite the remainder of the cloudy white, toxic substance being anything but. For a second I did not react to the rage swirling through my blood, just as he did not attempt to pick it up despite us both knowing he wanted nothing more than to snatch it away from our line of sight and have it become his dirty secret once more.

“What the fuck?” I said almost calmly like I was asking him what we were having for dinner and not why he had lied to me.

“That’s old,” he mumbled back, finally defensively reaching down and scrambling to shove the bag of cocaine back in his pocket.

“Bullshit.”

“Believe what you want, Frank. I’m going to bed,” he sighed heavily before attempting to retreat back towards the large wooden oak door of the bedroom we had shared for many years here. 

“No,” I lunged forward and this time harshly grabbed his wrist, anger making me act on impulses like some fucked up kind of fight or flight situation. “You don’t get to fucking have me be worried sick about your mental health, whilst you’re pumping this shit into your bloodstream!”

“ _Ooh, congratulations_ , Frank!” He snapped snidely. “Your psychology revision is really coming in handy, isn’t it? You don’t know jack shit about my mind!”

“Oh come on, you don’t need to be fucking Freud to work out adding more chemicals to your already overloaded brain is not a fucking good equation, you absolute idiot!” I yelled at him, my heart hammering with each harsh reality of my words. 

“Well, as much as we would all like to never touch drugs and be a perfect little soccer boy like you, Frank, some of us are fucked up.” He pulled his arm back, pushing me harshly in the process.

“You know what?” My voice lowered as I became cruel with exhaustion. “You deserve everything you fucking get! I’m done burning myself out trying to get you to feel happier when you don’t do anything to help yourself!”

I regretted the words as soon as they left my lips, and I didn’t enjoy the hurt that sprayed from my words and splattered onto his face like I thought I would. In theory, hurting Gerard always made me feel powerful, but the execution of it had never made me feel smaller than ever before.

“I’m burning you out?” He replied in that shaky, small voice I fucking hated as he chewed viciously as the inside of his cheek.

“Gerard, I didn’t-“ I tried to desperately explain myself, but he had already started backing away from me like a cowering puppy that had been kicked.

His breathing became quickened as he bolted into the bedroom, slamming the door shut behind him. I was pissed off, but I hadn’t wanted to hurt him like that. I tried to compose myself enough to at least get a drink, but my shaky hands made the task exceedingly difficult and I could not quite focus on the task in hand when I knew of what disruption lay behind the door in front of me.

 

I braced myself for a few moments, the words I had spat at him ringing loud and clear like an evacuative war siren in my head. The worst thing was, I had actually meant what I’d said and perhaps that's why I was so pissed off. I knew it wasn’t as black and white as I saw it, but I didn’t get why he couldn’t just fucking stop doing the things that were slowly killing off his mind. In fact, the more I thought about it, the more infuriated I got that he continued to indulge in his drug habits whilst I couldn’t sleep at night with my plaguing nightmares of him slipping through my grasp. In a sudden movement that shocked even myself, I slammed the cup of water I had been drinking on to the old wooden table, the dull thud of the glass on the surface replicating the painful, agonising beat in my head. I marched towards the bedroom door, the almost animalistic urge inside of me not being satisfied with the way he had walked off with that exact bag of shit that I hated so much. It wouldn’t have surprised me if he was smacked out of his face on his remainder of coke just as I was once again awake too late worrying about him.

 

I think I would have preferred that though to what actually awaited me behind the bedroom door. As I walked in, the lights were off and all that met me were the heavy pants of Gerard as if he had been running a fucking marathon.

“Gerard?” I frowned, my voice still assertive yet still possessing just the slightest bit of concern for him. For how much I hated him, I loved him twice as much and that mainly just left me fucking confused and pained most of the time. “Gerard?” I asked again as I was met with no reply. The lights were off so I could not see, but the familiar smell of the old bedroom built the image of it back up in my memory. The twin beds remained unmoved from the last time we were here, right under the large window that was just out of reach from the moonlights glow. The old wooden floor creaked beneath me as I shuffled awkwardly on my feet, his heavy breathing scaring me. I was still pissed off though, and as I slammed the lights on I saw him curled in a foetal position on one of the twin beds staring blankly at the wall in front of him. He had his face angled so that I could not see his expression, but I figured it would not be pleasant with the way he had stormed away from me.

“Gerard, for fuck’s sake!” I snapped in utter frustration, “just answer me!” 

But just like I was expecting, I was met with complete silence as a response and I finally had enough. I wanted to go home more than ever. It was supposed to work out like this, he was meant to get away from the societal pressures and he was meant to be okay. Instead, he was blocking me out just like he did to fucking everyone.

“Suit your fucking self,” I said sharply, trying to ignore the hurt spreading through me with the way he didn’t fucking care.

 

My life had been almost perfect for a few months now, I had almost forgotten the tightening lump-like feeling in my throat as I furiously blinked back tears that were threatening to fall as a result of him, yet again. I sighed and rubbed my forehead, a building pressure amounting there. I tried to take a moment to appreciate all the things that I had, but that was becoming increasingly difficult. I was stuck in a sleepy seaside town, miles away from those who I’d usually run to when me and Gerard argued with no phone signal to even attempt to talk to anybody else. I suddenly felt an impending sense of loneliness creeping up on me like a fucking psychopath to a lone damsel in a late-night alleyway. I dreaded how I was going to even bring up the conversation of getting home until the sound of the door creaking open behind me shocked me back into reality.

 

“Gerard?” I said stupidly as if there was anybody else for at least a couple of miles around. I still span on my heel quickly to see him shuffling out of the bedroom, his eyes wide and full of fear of something that I could not quite comprehend. “Are you okay?” I frowned at him as he approached me, clutching tightly at his own hands so tightly his knuckles were turning white. He merely looked at me and shook his head, fat teardrops streaming from his eyes suddenly like a broken dam that had been holding back a flood for years too long. 

“Shit, I’m sorry,” I rushed over to him, every ounce of anger I had for him crumbling away just like his form was doing right in front of my very eyes. He trembled as if he was terrified, his whole frame giving him away as the shell of the person he had become. Every step that I took felt agonisingly long, but I eventually reached him and grabbed his face harshly between my hands.

“I’m not okay, Frank,” he suddenly spoke, his voice shaky and high as hot, salty tears streamed down his warm cheeks onto my hands that were splayed on his cheeks. 

“I know,” I tried to shush him with my reassurance even though I had never felt more out of my depth. “I know you’re not.”

 

My words seemed futile whilst he was not in a fit state to hear them, but my actions were apparently not. I rested my forehead on his own, my hand creeping around the back of his head to tangle in his hair as I felt him shake underneath my touch. I’d seen him have a panic attack before, but never quite like this. I had never seen him quite so defeated, his eyes quite so hopeless and his breathing so shallow. 

“I can’t keep living like this, Frank,” he sobbed like a child, “I just can’t fucking do it anymore.”

“What are you saying?” I fretted.

“I don’t want to be alive, it hurts too much,” his voice was somehow hollow, yet dripping with feelings all at the same time. The hurt radiating from his core suddenly blended in with his exterior numbness leaving us both in the unknown as he broke down in my arms.

“Please don’t say that,” my own voice sounding just as unsure as his as I became scared for his safety.

“I can’t do it, I just can’t,” he sobbed as he completely collapsed against me, his body slowly sliding down my own as he became a slump on the floor at my feet crying his fucking heart out. 

 

All I could do at that moment was stand there and watch the person I had looked up to my whole life’s world fall apart for an unclear reason. I didn’t know what went on in his head, I had no fucking clue what had made him snap quite this badly that I was unsure if I’d ever be able to put him back together again. 

“You need to breathe, G,” my voice softened yet was still somewhat stern with the imperative instruction. He did not need for me to wail in the same way he was, he needed me to be stronger more than ever. I shouldn’t have been looking at my lack of understanding for his troubled mind as a disadvantage, it should have been a good thing. I needed to be the strong one for once because I didn’t think he was quite well enough to pull himself out of this one alone. I crouched down next to him, daring to reach my fingers over cautiously to stroke the now wet with tears strands of hair from his eyes. His skin was hot to my touch, his forehead clammy from expelled sweat and tears in which he had tried to messily wipe away with his bunched fists. 

“I can’t,” he trembled. 

“You fuckin’ can, and you fuckin’ will because I need you,” I half smiled, even though it was possible to hear the heartbreak in my voice.

“No, because all I ever do is burden you, you’d be better off without me. Everyone would be better off without me, but you’re just the only one I give a shit about.”

“Shut the fuck up! You know I didn’t mean that!”

“I know you said that because you’re pissed, but I know it’s true,” he replied, his breathing becoming more hyperventilated as he spilt his truths. 

“That’s not true!”

“You only deal with me because you don’t know anything different.”

“I fucking deal with you because I love you, I fucking love you, Gerard!” I fumed at him and lunged forward to wrap him up in a tight hug. I reached him with such force that I knocked us both back on our backs as I just clutched him close to me as he continued to sob it out. I was on top of him, straddling him by pinning him onto the floor partly with pure passion and partly as a desperate attempt to stop him trembling. He did not respond, I didn’t think he physically could as he was sobbing so desperately on my shoulder I feared it may have stopped him breathing. Both of our emotions were high, the conclusions in my head running wild and free like vicious wolves. 

“Get up, G,” I almost stammered once his breaths had become slower. They were still shaky, but at least he had stopped making that heart-wrenching sound that was almost making me crumble too. He did not move, so I took the situation into my own hands and slowly crawled off his frame and got to my feet like a fucking baby gazelle. The intensity of the scene before me had sent me into autopilot, but for that, I was grateful as it meant my racing mind did not have to burn out. 

“Where are you going?” He finally spoke with something other than the fear in his eyes. He desperately scrambled to grasp at my hand, his doe-like crystal green eyes staring up at me with an agonising despondency. 

“Come here,” I merely replied, pulling him to his feet and bundling him up with my arms wrapping around his shoulder. I lead him to the bathroom like a brain dead corpse, his heavy footsteps mirroring mine whilst he could not function autonomously. Although the fire had made the beach house a little too uncomfortably warm, he still shivered as if he was stood in the freezing ocean behind us. I lead him to the bathroom and finally bared his weight to sit on the toilet to give myself enough respite to figure something out. The old, claw legged bath behind us was screaming my name, memories of us being placed there together splashing and giggling when we were no older than older toddlers playing in my mind like an old-fashioned movie. Over the years and the rejection of his grandmothers cleaning attention over the winter months, the bath did not sparkle in the same way it did all those years ago, but it still had hope; just like Gerard did. 

I had no time to waste with finding the packed away bubble bath or shampoo, I just had to help him bathe away his fears as quickly as I could. He viewed his demons as sins that he could not remove, but I knew that was just a projection from the overly dark corner of his brain that sometimes took over him. He glanced over at me as if I was barbaric, confusion in his eyes wondering why the fuck I was turning the old chrome taps to flood the tub with steaming hot water in a moment like that. I could tell the rational side of him was begging to ask, but he was a prisoner in his own head, his tongue being held captive by the demon inside of him. 

“Just trust me,” I tried to smile at him as I attempted to run out the room to grab some more supplies. He futilely grabbed onto my hand with desperation, abandonment screaming with his glance.

“I said trust me!” I leant down and placed a messy kiss on his cheek before he reluctantly released his grip on me and allowed me to leave him for just a brief few seconds. It felt fucking good to kiss him again, even if it was just his cheek. We had barely touched in what had felt for so long that I was forgetting the way he could make my insides squirm when he held me in his strong arms. I never wanted to forget that, I wanted to be his forever. 

 

I scrambled in his bag that he had tossed carelessly on the kitchen side looking for the one thing he needed, but I knew he had also been rejecting. As I moved the screwed up hoodie he had thrown in his bag I heard the rattle of the very thing I had been looking out. I felt almost euphoric as I pulled out the amber pill bottle but at the same time helpless as I saw how many anti-depressants were actually in the bottle. It was feasible that the container was new and he had not yet taken many, but I knew Gerard and I knew that was unlikely. When he was in one of his hypo-aroused states, he carried around his bottle of pills like a fucking nun with a bible but it was all a show. When he was in this state, he couldn’t even function, let alone look after himself enough to actually take his medication. That took me a while to get my head around because it was nothing less than frustrating to watch. My mindset was that if he’d had diabetes or something he would have taken insulin so it was beyond me why he wouldn’t just take those little white pills that would miraculously cure his serotonin deficit and make him somewhat okay then. It wasn’t that simple though, and I was not depressed therefore understanding how his brain worked was a lesson for his both. I didn’t have to wonder anymore though, I knew what he needed and I knew he needed it as soon as possible.

 

I grabbed a glass of water as I went back towards the bathroom to meet him with his eyes still glued to the door. I saw a little glimpse of something I had not seen in him in a long time when I came back, but it was quickly clouded over with a look of resentment as he saw what I was clutching as if it were my own lifeline; which wasn’t even that far away from the truth. 

“You need to take one, Gerard,” I said sternly as he shook his head like a stubborn toddler. “Why? Why the fuck won’t you just take a tablet? Can you not just do it for me-“

“You can leave, I don’t care.” He finally spoke, his words sounding almost foreign as the waves of sound hit my ears.

“Huh?” I said in bewilderment, still attempting to force the tablets in his vicinity. 

“You can leave me.”

“Why would I do that?” I frowned.

“Because if I’m so much of a burden, I’d rather you just fucking leave me to rot by myself. I don’t need you, Frank, I don’t fucking need anybody,” he stated almost as if he meant it, but his wobbling bottom lip told me differently. His face was red and stained with salty, hot tears already and his eyes rung purple from exhaustion but that did not stop the trickle of fresh droplets falling. 

“Just fucking stop it,” I snapped at him as he shrunk back into himself. I knew he was being an absolute cock to me because he was hurting inside so badly he wanted to justify his inner beliefs about being a bad person, but his comments still stung. Over the years, I had built an armour so strong that most of his hurtful comments bounced straight off, but some snook through and pierced my skin like a sharpened sword. If I wasn’t so helplessly in love with him, I would have let him win. “Now, take a fucking pill.”

I shook the container as one of the tablets fell into my palm, my fingers gripping it so tightly that I was leaving little crescent-shaped patterns in my skin. I got my thumb of my free hand on his bottom lip and opened his mouth as he complied to my force as I placed the tablet on his tongue. The whole scene was a little crazy, but it just felt right. He did not swallow, he just let the pill sit on his tongue. I reached over and grabbed the water I had left on the side only moments earlier as I put it right to his lips. He resisted me for a few moments before the temptation of self-care became too much and he started guzzling back the beverage like a starved infant. For weeks, he had resisted himself anything other than the basics he needed to survive, only consuming water and food when it was absolutely fucking necessary. He didn’t have to torture himself any longer though, I was here, and I was not going fucking anywhere. 

 

As he devoured the drink, his trembling hands were unable to hold onto the glass at first meaning I held it for him, he seemed to get stronger. The strength in his wrist seemed to rejuvenate as he was able to hold the cup without dropping it and letting it shatter into a million pieces, and I was able to shut off the bathwater which had become dangerously close to over-flowing. 

 

I approached him with a certain level of apprehension as I knew he was not going to take kindly to my next move. I knew it was in his best interests though, so I knew I had to be persistent with him. I reached out and took the empty glass from his grasp and replaced it with my hand, gently pulling him to his feet. I ached to reach out and wipe away the droplet of water that had become expelled from his lips, the innocence on his face making it unbearable, but I needed to be selfless and not touch him like that until he was ready. Instead, I cautiously reached out and placed my hands on his shoulders.

“Can I?” I searched his eyes for consent. He merely responded with a nod letting his arms go limp enough that the cardigan he was wearing slid straight off his shoulders and fell to the floor with a dull thud. He complied easier than I thought he would, holding up his arms like a toddler to allow me to pull his well-worn joy division t-shirt right over his head. I held back a gasp as it dawned on me his internal damage had radiated from his core and gave away secrets on his skin. I hadn’t realised how much weight he had lost, too wrapped up in my lust for him to actually just stop for a second a observe just how much further his shoulder blades were protruding under his skin. I felt overwhelmed with guilt despite knowing there was nothing I could have done. He had been screaming for help and all I could fret about was whether he was in love with me or not. His skin had taken on a dull, purple tone, his nails bit write down to the nub and his hair now overgrown and greasy. It baffled me how his friends had not realised there had been something wrong, each of them too obsessed with feeding him drugs and bad habits just to get him alert enough to last through the night, disregarding the mess they were making inside of his head that I had been left to clean up when morning came. I sighed heavily, trying my best to hide my exhaustion but failing miserably as he wrapped his arm protectively around his frail frame. I tried to ignore it and instead moved on to his sweatpants. As I pushed them down, he stood silently still, his breath hitched in his throat. He stood in front of me shivering in his underwear, his pupils darting between the steaming bath and the apprehensiveness on my face. Each time I had undressed him it had always been so intimate and full of lust that it felt almost alien to see him naked in such a context. 

“I don’t know if you want me to-“ I trailed off in defeat as he scrunched his eyes shut above me and nodded his head. I hadn’t expected him to want to go into the bath without the protection of his underwear, even in front of me who had seen him naked hundreds of times. His insecurities had grown wild and out of control in the weeks he had let them manifest like a wild garden full of thorns and weeds, almost being impossible for me to break through, which meant being naked for him was like asking him to be on the front line of a vicious war. I sighed again though, burying my own fear as I slowly pulled down his waistband.

 

To see the boy that I loved standing there so vulnerable and lost was killing me, especially with the way the occasional tear fell and trickled down his cheek. I couldn’t take it anymore, I shot to my feet and pulled him into a hug so tight he may have never escaped it. I trailed my hand around his neck pulling his head onto my shoulder, whispering reassurances into his hair as I rocked him back and forth. Despite his lack of clothing, the act was far from sexual as it dawned on me intimacy did not necessarily mean sexual. The moment felt so raw and real that was shared just between the two of us that I never wanted to let go of him. I eventually managed it though, pulling myself backwards and hating the way the absence of his warm skin left a chill where his forehead had been resting. 

“I love you, Gerard,” I mumbled, my own voice becoming oddly wobbly as I fought back emotion. I was strong enough to get through this night, I just hoped he would be to. 

 

I took his frail hand and led him to the bath in which he obediently got into. He did not flinch at the steaming hot water, instead, he pulled his knees up to his chest and continued to cry his heart out with his head in his hands. All I could do was sit there and wait for him to cry it out, occasionally stroking his hair and rubbing his back from the edge of the bathtub in which I was perched upon. Once he had calmed down a little, I left him again to go to the cupboard just outside of the room to get something to strip the build-up of grease from his hair. All that remained from the end of the beach season was a small amount of his grandmother’s rose-scented shampoo, but for some reason, it smelt familiar and reminded us both of home. He closed his eyes and finally relaxed the fearful expression on his face as I massaged the soap into his hair, my fingers rubbing small circles on his scalp as he relaxed into my touch. I gathered water in my cupped hands, washing away the soap, careful to avoid his eyes as the suds dripped down his back and into the water he was sat in. I was perhaps a little overzealous with it, but he had finally stopped crying enough that I did not want to stop. Eventually, though, he could not fight the yawn falling from his lips, his tired eyes looked sore and tired letting me know it was time for him to go to bed. I checked the time quickly and it was way past 2 AM, but he finally had calmed down so it all seemed worth it to me. I felt a small swell of pride inside of me as I reached to the airing cupboard and got one of his grandmother’s powdered pink, fluffy towels to wrap him up in.

 

Once he was bundled up, I lead him back into the kitchen where I dried him off and got him into the pyjamas he had in his bag. I ached to kiss him, but I did not dare. There were no words spoken between us, but there didn’t have to be. We both understood the need for silence at that moment, and I understood each one of his silent instructions.

 

“You tired?” I finally asked as I sat him down on the sofa in front of the blazing fire as I busied myself with making him another glass of water. I needn’t have asked, I knew he was exhausted with the way he battled with yet another yawn. He merely nodded, so I turned off the lights, sat beside him and pulled the throw over him as the warm crackling of the fire filled the air. I couldn’t quite describe the feeling, but it was almost tranquil. 

 

“I feel so lonely,” he said glumly and out of the blue. He shocked me, I thought he had been sleeping and I had almost been following suit by having fleeting dreams again. For a moment I was unsure if I had dreamt his voice, but as I came back to reality I shot awake trying to engage him with any conversation I could, especially one where he would open up with his truths. 

“Lonely?” I frowned into the darkness, turning my hot cheek away from the fire so he could not see my face. I had been so close to the blaze that my skin had become prickly with heat, but I did not think that was the reason my head was swimming. 

“Yes,” he confirmed in a small whisper. 

“Why are you lonely?” I said hastily, “you have me.”

I couldn’t deny that I was hurt, I was seemingly not enough for him despite trying to be everything he needed and the fact I wanted to be committed to him was only like salt to a fresh wound.

“Because it’s not like we’re together, is it? One day, you’re going to meet someone who going to make you think why the fuck you spent so long hanging around with me when all I ever do is fuck up your life.”

“Why can’t we be?” I mumbled. I had never quite been so brash with my own feelings, but the ambiguity of the ill-lit room and the over-sensitised emotions had made me have an all or nothing kind of complex. I had been avoiding the subject for weeks, neither of us seeing other people but never having the definite promise that it wouldn’t happen. All I wanted was to be with him so we could start our lives properly. I still wanted him as a best friend, but I wanted him to be so much more than that but perhaps that was a little too crass.

“Huh?”

“Why can’t we be together?” My voice was almost strangled and unusually high, but I was fucking terrified.

“You know why, Frank,” He sighed heavily as if it were obvious, despite leaving me in more confusion than before. I didn’t fucking know why other than that he just didn’t want me like that.

“I don’t though, Gerard!”

“Okay, first of all, we’re both boys and you know for a fact that isn’t sustainable! One day you’re going to want a family and a life that comes with no hassle and you’re slowly going to resent me for not being able to give you that!”

“So, what the fuck am I meant to do? Sit back and watch you marry a woman and have kids and shit and just still be expected to be your best friend and to not want you?” My voice had become raised both with emotion and frustration, but I didn’t care.

“Don’t be stupid! This is just a phase that you’re going to grow out of. You think you’re in love with me because I took your virginity, it’s just stupid teenage hormones.”

“So, you only use me because of your _stupid teenage hormones_?” I quoted him dryly.

“No! I’m different I’m fucked up and-“

“Oh, _boo fucking hoo_! I know you struggle mentally and I’m really sorry about that, but you always are so patronising acting like I’m not allowed to be sad about this because I don’t have depression! I’m allowed to be sad, Gerard, that’s my choice, not yours!”

“Sad about what?”

“You don’t want me! I’m good enough to fuck about with but God forbid actually wanting to be with me. You know, I used to sit and wonder how those girls you fucked over could sit and fall for your bullshit when everybody knows exactly what you’re like, but I’ve been hypocritical all along! I’m no different to them-“

“You are different!” He fumed.

“Then be with me!”

“I can’t,” he rubbed his temples as if his head hurt, but that was nothing to the pain in my chest as it felt like my heart was going to beat straight out of there like a fucking tragic version of the chest-burster scene from Alien.

“Why?”

“Because you think people are just going to accept it? Joe-“

“If you still care about Joe’s opinion over mine, then I think it’s better if I go home in the morning,” I mumbled quietly, yet certainly.

“You know that’s not what I meant!” He surged forwards from the other end of the sofa, his arms placed desperately on either one of mine. It was stupid, but I could not deny the way my heart skipped a beat with his touch, my anger melting away with my need to be close to him. “Please, don’t leave me here.”

“I won’t,” I said like a rehearsed line. For a second I had been brave, but I knew he still controlled me. He didn’t even mean to, that was the worst thing. It wasn’t his fault that I was in love with him.

“Please, Bug,” he whimpered.

“I’m not! But I think you should go to sleep, G.”

“Sleep?” He frowned, even though the tired rings around his eyes said differently. 

“Yeah, I don’t wanna argue with you so I’d rather just talk about this when we’re not tired.”

“Talk about what?”

“You know what,” I sighed in defeat, “nothing, G, just try and get some rest, yeah?”

 

I shouldn’t have let it go, but he needed a release from his mind more than I did. As he lay back obediently and shut his eyes, I realised I may not have won the battle but I had won the war. He was finally giving in to his body's demands of rest, and for that, I would have given up everything.

 

——

 

I had not meant to fall asleep on the sofa with him, but I had spent so long watching him rest that I must have just crashed myself. My body apparently hated me for it as my joints ached with the awkward positioning I had been sleeping in and the way my once sodden clothes from his bath had dried awkwardly and stuck to my skin. I felt like death and almost went straight back to sleep, the grey skylight peeking through the cracks in the blind being much too early for my liking. The once blazing fire had settled to a few dying embers, the chill of the room almost winning but coming just behind more sleep. I stretched out my legs enjoying the way my knees cracked with the release of the build-up in pressure until something did not feel right. I shot up with the harrowing realisation there was too much room on the sofa, suddenly my tiredness not existing.

“Gerard?” I cried pathetically into the empty, darkroom. 

 

As the increasing realisation that he was missing crept on my shoulders, so did the negative thoughts. We were in the middle of nowhere, his mindset in the fucking gutter with a big, vast ocean out in front of him. I dreaded to think of what he could have done in those few stupid hours that sleep had won. 

 

I was on my own in a big beach house, and I had never been more fearful for his wellbeing. 


End file.
